Bread and Roses

For other uses, see Bread and Roses (disambiguation).

"Bread and Roses" is a political slogan as well as the name of an associated poem and song. It originated from a speech given by American women's suffrage activist Helen Todd; a line in that speech about "bread for all, and roses too"^[1] inspired the title of the poem Bread and Roses by James Oppenheim.^[2] The poem was first published in The American Magazine in December 1911, with the attribution line "'Bread for all, and Roses, too'—a slogan of the women in the West."^[3] The poem has been translated into other languages and has been set to music by at least three composers.

"As we come marching, marching, in the beauty of the day, A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill-lofts gray"—first lines of Bread and Roses. Image of workers marching during the Lawrence textile strike.

The phrase is commonly associated with the textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, between January and March 1912, now often referred to as the "Bread and Roses strike". The slogan pairing bread and roses, appealing for both fair wages and dignified conditions, found resonance as transcending "the sometimes tedious struggles for marginal economic advances" in the "light of labor struggles as based on striving for dignity and respect", as Robert J. S. Ross wrote in 2013.^[4]

History

Women's suffrage

 

Helen Todd and her colleagues campaign for women's suffrage. Todd, as a factory inspector, discussed how the right to vote would gain for working women and society "bread and roses"–referring to greater income, and life's roses.

The first mention of the phrase and its meaning appears in The American Magazine in September 1911. In an article by Helen Todd, she describes how a group of women from the Chicago Women's Club, after listening to advice from Senator Robert La Follette, decided to initiate an automobile campaign around the state of Illinois for the right of women to vote in June 1910.^[5] The women who made up the first automobile campaign were Catherine McCulloch, a lawyer and justice of the peace; Anna Blount, a physician and surgeon; Kate Hughes, a minister; Helen Todd, a state factory inspector; and Jennie Johnson, a singer. Each of the speakers was assigned a subject in which they were an expert. McCulloch gave a record of the votes of the representatives and senators to their home constituents. Blount's subject was taxation without representation as concerns women. Hughes gave her speech on the history of the women's suffrage movement. Johnson opened up the speeches with a set of suffrage songs which was intended to focus and quiet the audience for the subsequent speeches. Helen Todd, as a factory inspector, represented the working women and discussed the need for laws concerning wages, work conditions, and hours.^[6][7][8]

It is in Todd's speech on the condition of the working women that the phrase is first mentioned. A young hired girl expressed to Todd, who was staying with the hired girl's family overnight during the campaign, what she had liked the most about the speeches the night before: "It was that about the women votin' so's everybody would have bread and flowers too." Todd then goes on to explain how the phrase "Bread for all, and Roses too" expresses the soul of the women's movement and explains the meaning of the phrase in her speech.

Not at once; but woman is the mothering element in the world and her vote will go toward helping forward the time when life's Bread, which is home, shelter and security, and the Roses of life, music, education, nature and books, shall be the heritage of every child that is born in the country, in the government of which she has a voice.

— Helen Todd, 1910.^[1]

Women's Trade Union League

 

The Women's Trade Union League was central in promoting the eight-hour day, a living wage and improved working conditions.

Helen Todd, subsequently, became involved in the fall of 1910 with the Chicago garment workers' strike, which was led by the Women's Trade Union League of Chicago.^[9] The Women's Trade Union League worked closely with the Chicago Women's Club in organizing the strike, picket lines, speeches, and worker relief activities. Helen Todd and the president of the Women's Trade Union League Margaret Robins made a number of speeches during the strike and manned with the thousands of striking garment workers the picket lines.^[10] During the strike, it was later reported that a sign was seen with the slogan "We want bread – and roses, too".^[11][12][13]

In 1911 Helen Todd went out to California to help lead the suffrage movement in the state and campaign in the state's fall election for proposition 4, which sought women's suffrage.^[14][15] The women's suffrage campaign proved successful, and the right for women to vote passed in the state in November 1911.^[16][17] During the California campaign, the suffragettes carried banners with several slogans; one was "Bread for all, and Roses, too!"—the same phrase that Helen Todd used in her speech the previous summer.^[18][19]

Oppenheim's poem

The phrase was subsequently picked up by James Oppenheim and incorporated into his poem 'Bread and Roses',^[19] which was published in The American Magazine in December 1911, with the attribution line "'Bread for all, and Roses, too' – a slogan of the women in the West."^[20] After the poem’s publication in 1911, the poem was published again in July 1912 in The Survey with the same attribution as in December 1911. It was published again on October 4, 1912, in The Public, a weekly led by Louis F. Post in Chicago, this time with the slogan being attributed to the "Chicago Women Trade Unionists".^[21]

Lawrence textile strike

 

The children of Lawrence textile strikers, who were sent to New York City for temporary care, march with banners in solidarity with the textile strikers back in Massachusetts.

The first publication of Oppenheim's poem in book form was in the 1915 labor anthology, The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest by Upton Sinclair. This time the poem had the new attribution and rephrased slogan: "In a parade of strikers of Lawrence, Mass., some young girls carried a banner inscribed, 'We want Bread, and Roses too!'".^[22] The Lawrence textile strike, which lasted from January to March 1912, united dozens of immigrant communities under the leadership of the Industrial Workers of the World, and was led to a large extent by women. The Women's Trade Union League of Boston also became partially involved in the strike, and set up a relief station, which provided food.

The Women's Trade Union League of Boston had, however, only limited involvement in the strike, since it was affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL), which did not endorse the strike. This restraint on involvement in the strike caused a number of Boston League members to resign. One critic of the AFL's failure to endorse the strike stated: "To me, many of the people in the AFL seem to be selfish, reactionary and remote from the struggle for bread and liberty of the unskilled workers..."^[23] Although popular telling of the strike includes signs being carried by women reading "We want bread, but we want roses, too!", a number of historians are of the opinion that this account is ahistorical.^{[24][25][4][26]}

Schneiderman's speech

 

Poster from 1912 of Rose Schneiderman as speaker with her famous bread and roses quote printed on it

In May 1912, Merle Bosworth gave a speech in Plymouth, Indiana, on women suffrage in which she repeated the discussion of taxation without representation and the meaning of the phrase "Bread and Roses" that Helen Todd and her companions gave in 1910 during their automobile campaign for the women's suffrage.^[27] A month later in June 1912 Rose Schneiderman of the Women's Trade Union League of New York discussed the phrase in a speech she gave in Cleveland in support of the Ohio women's campaign for equal suffrage.^[28] In her speech, which was partially published in the Women's Trade Union League journal Life and Labor, she stated:

What the woman who labors wants is the right to live, not simply exist – the right to life as the rich woman has the right to life, and the sun and music and art. You have nothing that the humblest worker has not a right to have also. The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too. Help, you women of privilege, give her the ballot to fight with.

— Rose Schneiderman, 1912.^[29]

Schneiderman, subsequently, gave a number of speeches in which she repeated her quote about the worker desiring bread and roses. Due to these speeches, Schneiderman's name became intertwined with the phrase bread and roses. A year after the publication of Oppenheim's poem, the Lawrence textile strike, and Schneiderman's speech, the phrase had spread throughout the country. In July 1913, for instance, during a suffrage parade in Maryland, a float with the theme "Bread for all, and roses, too" participated. The float "bore ... a boat with three children, a boy with a basket of bread and two girls with a basket of roses."^[30]

Galen of Pergamon

The source of Helen Todd's inspiration for the phrase "bread and roses" is unknown.^[31] However, there is a quote by the Roman physician and philosopher Galen of Pergamon which closely parallels the sentiment and wording of the phrase. Edward Lane, in the notes of his 1838 translation of One Thousand and One Nights,^[32] states that, according to 15th-century writer Shems-ed-Deen Moḥammad en-Nowwájee, Galen said, "He who has two cakes of bread, let him dispose of one of them for some flowers of narcissus; for bread is the food of the body, and the narcissus is the food of the soul."^[33][34] The sentiment that the poor were not only lacking in food for the body, but also flowers for the soul was a theme among reformers of the period.^[35][36] In April 1907, Mary MacArthur of the British Women's Trade Union League visited the Women's Trade Union League of Chicago and gave a speech addressing this theme.^[37] Alice Henry of the Chicago League reported that McArthur's message could be summed up by Galen's quote, which she had mentioned more than once, and that although the quote warns against the materialist nature of the industrial situation, it also points in the direction in which the reformers hopes may go. McArthur's version of Galen's quote is:

If thou hast two loaves of bread, sell one and buy flowers, for bread is food for the body, but flowers are food for the mind.

— Galen of Pergamon, c. 200 AD.^[37][33]

Poem

Bread and Roses

As we come marching, marching, in the beauty of the day,
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill-lofts gray
Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,
For the people hear us singing, "Bread and Roses, Bread and Roses."

As we come marching, marching, we battle, too, for men—
For they are women's children and we mother them again.
Our days shall not be sweated from birth until life closes—
Hearts starve as well as bodies: Give us Bread, but give us Roses.

As we come marching, marching, unnumbered women dead
Go crying through our singing their ancient song of Bread;
Small art and love and beauty their trudging spirits knew—
Yes, it is Bread we fight for—but we fight for Roses, too.

As we come marching, marching, we bring the Greater Days—
The rising of the women means the rising of the race.
No more the drudge and idler—ten that toil where one reposes—
But a sharing of life's glories: Bread and Roses, Bread and Roses.

— James Oppenheim, 1911.^[20]

Song

Kohlsaat original

The poem "Bread and Roses" has been set to music several times. The earliest version was set to music by Caroline Kohlsaat in 1917.^[38][39][40] The first performance of Kohlsaat's song was at the River Forest Women's Club where she was the chorus director.^[41][38] Kohlsaat's song eventually drifted to the picket line. By the 1930s, the song was being extensively used by women, while they fed and supported the strikers on the picket line at the manufacturing plants.^[42] The song also migrated to the college campus. At some women's colleges, the song became part of their traditional song set.^[43][44]

Women's colleges

Since 1932, the song has been sung by graduating seniors at Mount Holyoke College during the Laurel Parade ceremony, part of the college's graduation tradition.^[44] It is also one of the central songs at Bryn Mawr College, traditionally sung at the College's "Step-Sings".^[45] The use of the song at Bryn Mawr College evolved out of the school's first-of-its-kind summer labor education program. In 1921, the school started the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers; each year, one hundred largely unschooled workers from factories, mills and sweatshops were brought to the school for an eight-week study in humanities and labor solidarity. The program served as a model for others in the labor education movement in the 1920s and 1930s.^[43]

Fariña rediscovery

The song gained a larger audience after World War II with its publication in January 1952 in Sing Out!.^[46] In 1974 the poem was set a second time to music by Mimi Fariña. This version has been recorded by various artists, including Judy Collins, Ani DiFranco, Utah Phillips, and Josh Lucker, and was performed by a slowly-growing crowd of workers in a moving/critical turning point scene in the 2014 movie "Pride."Pride_(2014_film) John Denver also set it to music in 1988, using a melody different from the more common Mimi Fariña version. It was again set to music in Germany by Renate Fresow, using a translation by the Hannoveraner Weiberquartett, but which is sung mostly with the German translation by Peter Maiwald.^[47] Composer Christian Wolff wrote a piano piece entitled "Bread and Roses" (1976) based on the strike song.^[48] In 1989/91, Si Kahn wrote a song the refrain of which starts with the song's title: "They all sang 'Bread and Roses'".^[49]

Translations

The poem has been translated into Russian by Russian poet Kirill Felixovich Medvedev, set to the original Kohlsaat music, and performed by the Moscow-based political activist punk collective Arkadiy Kots (Аркадий Коц), appearing on their 2016 album Music for the working class.^[50]

Legacy

Mimi Fariña created the Bread and Roses Benefit Agency in 1974.^[51]

The logo for the Democratic Socialists of America, formed in 1982, was inspired by the slogan. "Bread & Roses" is also a name of a national caucus within the organization.^[52] They have 4 (out of 16) members of the DSA's National Political Committee.^[53][54][55]

A quarterly journal produced by the UK section of the Industrial Workers of the World ('Wobblies') is called Bread and Roses.^[56]

The 2014 film Pride depicts the members of a Welsh mining community singing "Bread and Roses" at a National Union of Mineworkers lodge during the UK miners' strike (1984–1985).^[57][58]

In 2018, the song was used in a video produced by London-Irish Abortion Rights Campaign to promote the #HomeToVote movement, which encouraged young Irish people living abroad to return home to vote in the Referendum on the Thirty-sixth Amendment of the Irish Constitution.^[59][60]

In 2022 the TV series Riverdale depicted families of construction workers singing "Bread and Roses" to the workers to lift a spell their boss had put on them to break a strike.^[61]

The international socialist feminist organization Pan y Rosas is named after the slogan.

Miriam Schneir included it in her anthology, Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings, labelling it as one of the essential works of feminism.^[62]

See also

•  Organized labour portal

• Anna LoPizzo, woman striker killed during the Lawrence textile strike
• William M. Wood Co-founder of the American Woolen Company
• Sonja Davies, a New Zealand trade unionist, peace campaigner, Member of Parliament, and author of Bread and Roses: Her Story – an autobiography
• Bread and Roses, a Ken Loach movie
• Bread and circuses
• Rose (symbolism)
• List of socialist songs

Bibliography

• Bruce Watson, Bread and Roses: Mills, Migrants, and the Struggle for the American Dream (New York: Viking, 2005), ISBN 0-670-03397-9.

References

1. The American Magazine. Crowell-Collier Publishing Company. 1911. p. 619.
2. "Bread and Roses, by James Oppenheim". May 9, 2008. Retrieved April 20, 2016.
3. Zwick, Jim (2003). "Behind the Song: Bread and Roses". Sing Out! The Folk Song Magazine. 46: 92–93. ISSN 0037-5624. OCLC 474160863.
4. Ross, Robert J.S (March 2013). "Bread and Roses: Women Workers and the Struggle for Dignity and Respect". Working USA: The Journal of Labor & Society. Immanuel News and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 16: 59–68. doi:10.1111/wusa.12023. ISSN 1089-7011.
5. The American Magazine. Crowell-Collier Publishing Company. 1911. p. 611.
6. The American Magazine. Crowell-Collier Publishing Company. 1911. p. 612.
7. "Women's Vote and Child Labor". Dixon Evening Telegraph. July 5, 1910. p. 1. Retrieved February 26, 2019.
8. "Hears Talk on Women Suffrage". Dubuque Telegraph Herald. July 2, 1910. p. 10. Retrieved February 26, 2019.
9. Official report of the Strike committee,Chicago garment workers' strike October 29, 1910-February 18, 1911. Women's Trade Union League of Chicago. 1911. hdl:2027/inu.32000014247136.
10. Associated Press (November 2, 1910). "Chicago Society Women Arrested in Strikers' Riot". Los Angeles Herald. Retrieved January 20, 2019.
11. Life and labor: a monthly magazine. v.8. National Women's Trade Union League. September 1918. p. 189.
12. Life and labor bulletin. v.1-10 1922-1932. National Women's Trade Union League. October 1930. pp. 10 v.
13. The Playground. Executive Committee of the Playground Association of America. 1923. p. 435.
14. "Miss Helen Todd Coming to Tell about Votes for Women". Middletown Daily Times Press. February 17, 1915. Retrieved February 10, 2019.
15. Mac Gregor Todd, Helen (September 30, 1911). The Political Rights and Duties of Women. The California Outlook a Progressive Weekly. pp. 19–20.
16. "Ballot Uplifts Women of the West Says Worker". Los Angeles Herald. June 29, 1912. Retrieved January 20, 2019.
17. "How WomenWon the Vote" (PDF). National Women's History Project. p. 8. Retrieved January 20, 2019.
18. Farmer's Advocate and Home Journal. Farmer's Advocate of Winnipeg. 1912. p. 229.
19. Bacon, Leonard; Thompson, Joseph Parrish; Storrs, Richard Salter; Beecher, Henry Ward; Leavitt, Joshua; Bowen, Henry Chandler; Fuller, Harold de Wolf; Tilton, Theodore; Ward, William Hayes; Holt, Hamilton; Herter, Christian Archibald; Franklin, Fabian (November 30, 1911). "Browning or the Budget". The Independent. p. 1220. Retrieved January 21, 2019.
20. Oppenheim, James (December 1911). American Magazine. Colver Publishing House. p. 214.
21. Post, Louis Freeland; Post, Alice Thatcher; Cooley, Stoughton (October 4, 1912). The Public. Public Publishing Company. p. 951.
22. Sinclair, Upton (1915). The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest ... Sinclair. p. 247.
23. Nutter, Kathleen Banks (2000). The Necessity of Organization: Mary Kenney O'Sullivan and Trade Unionism for Women, 1892-1912. Taylor & Francis. pp. 159–68. ISBN 9780815335054.
24. Sider, Gerald M. (1997). Between history and histories: the making of silences and commemorations. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-0-8020-7883-4.
25. Watson, Bruce (2006). Bread and Roses: Mills, Migrants, and the Struggle for the American Dream (reprint ed.). Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-303735-4.
26. ´Silber, Irwin (March 10, 1999). "Re: Happy!; Bread and Roses". Newsgroup: rec.music.folk. Usenet: APC&1'0'7c92df7d'[e-mail]. Retrieved February 18, 2014.
27. "Oration on Woman Suffrage". The Weekly Republican. May 2, 1912. p. 3. Retrieved February 13, 2019.
28. Eisenstein, Sarah (1983). Give us bread but give us roses. Working women's consciousness in the United States, 1890 to the First World War. London: Routledge. p. 32. ISBN 0-7100-9479-5.
29. Life and Labor. National Women's Trade Union League. 1912. p. 288.
30. "Bread for all and roses too". Reno Evening Gazette. July 7, 1913. Retrieved February 18, 2019.
31. Forrant, Robert; Siegenthaler, Jurg K.; Levenstein, Charles; Wooding, John (December 5, 2016). The Great Lawrence Textile Strike of 1912: New Scholarship on the Bread & Roses Strike. Routledge. ISBN 9781351863339.
32. Lane, E. W. (1838). "From the Athenaeum − The Arabian Nights' Entertainments: with Copious Notes". Littell's Spirit of the Magazines and Annuals: Consisting of the Best Parts of Blackwood's, Metropolitan, New Monthly and Other Magazines, and All the Annuals. E. Littell & Company: 862.
33. Lane, Edward William (1883). Arabian Society In The Middle Ages Studies From The Thousand And One Nights. London. The quote comes via Arabic translation from the book Ḥalbet El-Kumeyt which was written by Shems-ed-deen Moḥammad En-Nowwájee († 1454) who attributes the quote to Galen. See pp. 167 (footnote 195), pp. 283{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
34. Galen (1916). Galen On the Natural Faculties. W. Heinemann. pp. 3. In this work, Galen does not specifically in one place state the quote mentioned by Edward Lane; however, in the first chapter of Natural Faculties he discusses the difference between plants and animals. Plants only have a physical body, while animals have both a physical body and soul. The body is fed by physical nutrients, such as bread, while the soul is fed by the senses. In this treatise, he studies the aspects of the physical body.
35. Swift, Daniel (October 2, 2017). "Lost and Pound". The Paris Review. Retrieved February 24, 2019.
36. Tongier, Mae Gutherie (March 1910). Sick and Lost His Grip. Vol. III, No. 14. The Progressive Woman. p. 15.
37. Henry, Alice (April 7, 1907). "Mary MacArthur and the Women's Trade Union Movement". The Survey. 18: 46–47.
38. "Club Chorus Sings". Oak Park Oak Leaves. February 10, 1917. p. 26. Retrieved February 10, 2019.
39. Wygal, Winnifred (1940). We Plan Our Own Worship Services: Business Girls Practice the Act and the Art of Group Worship. Womans Press. p. 78.
40. Fowke, Edith; Glazer, Joe; Bray, Kenneth Ira (1973). Songs of Work and Protest. Courier Corporation (Original Copyright 1960). pp. 70–71. ISBN 9780486228990.
41. Burgess, Nella (May 15, 1925). "River forest Women's Club". The Oak Parker. p. 18. Retrieved March 3, 2019.
42. "Churches -- St. John's Evangelical Church". Fort Madison Evening Democrat. June 16, 1934. p. 3. Retrieved March 3, 2019.
43. Dullea, Georgia (June 24, 1984). "Reunion at Bryn Mawr: Workers of 30's Return". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved February 11, 2019.
44. . mtholyoke.edu. Archived from the original on April 20, 2016. Retrieved April 19, 2016.
45. "Bryn Mawr's Summer School: Answers and Questions". Historyinpublic.blogs.brynmawr.edu. February 13, 2016. Retrieved January 2, 2017.
46. ´Silber, Irwin (March 11, 1999). "Re: Happy!; Bread and Roses". Newsgroup: rec.music.folk. Usenet: APC&1'0'7c92df7e'[e-mail]. Retrieved February 18, 2014. In any event, I am virtually certain that the song had been dormant for close on to 30 years until I came across sheet music for it while doing some research at the New York Public Library sometime in 1951. That's where the name Martha Coleman appeared. (This is just a guess, but I wouldn't be surprised if Martha Coleman turned out to be a pseudonym for Caroline Kohlsaat.) There is no evidence to indicate that this was particularly known as a song. The poem was somewhat known but not with a musical setting. The tune itself never caught on which is one reason why others have tried writing a new melody for it. I think if it was being sung prior to its publication in Sing Out! (January 1952), I would have known about it.
47. Karl Adamek: Lieder der Arbeiterbewegung, Büchergilde Gutenberg, Frankfurt am Main 1986 (2. Auflage), ISBN 3-763225633, S. 246 f.
48. "CHRISTIAN WOLFF ~ A COMPLETE ANTHOLOGY OF SOLO AND DUO VIOLIN PIECES". December 9, 2021. Retrieved June 2, 2022.
49. Offer, Joe (January 22, 2005). . mudcat.org. Archived from the original on February 22, 2014. Retrieved February 18, 2014.
50. "Музыка для рабочего класса || Music For The Working Class, by Группа Аркадий Коц". Группа Аркадий Коц. Retrieved April 2, 2021.
51. . Archived from the original on June 13, 2017. Retrieved June 4, 2017.
52. "Bread and Roses DSA". Bread and Roses DSA. Retrieved April 17, 2020.
53. "Introducing the Bread & Roses NPC Slate". Bread and Roses DSA. June 26, 2019. Retrieved April 17, 2020.
54. "Leadership and Structure". dsausa.org. Retrieved April 17, 2020.
55. "Keon Liberato". Bread and Roses DSA. Retrieved October 12, 2020.
56. . iww.org.uk. Archived from the original on March 20, 2016. Retrieved November 3, 2013.
57. . Universal Music Operations Limited. Archived from the original on October 8, 2014. Retrieved September 17, 2014.
58. Sisk, Emma (September 13, 2014). "How Welsh singing starlet Bronwen Lewis turned rejection on The Voice into big screen Pride". WalesOnline.
59. "The #HomeToVote videos released today will give you goosebumps". The Daily Edge. April 23, 2018.
60. London-Irish Abortion Rights Campaign. "#HomeToVote - Vote Yes to Remove the 8th Amendment on May 25th". Retrieved February 9, 2019 – via YouTube.
61. Carr, Mary Kate (August 1, 2022). "Riverdale's most bonkers season yet was also its most political". AV Club. Retrieved August 10, 2022.
62. Schneir, Miriam (1972). Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings. Vintage Books.

External links

• Bread & Roses: The Strike Led and Won by Women
• Performance of the original Kohlsaat version of the melody