Downloads the Price of Our Clothes Poetry Packet
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The Price of Our Clothes Poetry Packet Alison Morse The poems in this packet are a resource for anyone interested in promoting understanding and desire to act in solidarity with the people who make our clothes. They’re inspired by my family history and historic events. Soon after my Jewish grandmother fled the Russian Empire as a tween and arrived in NYC in the early part of the 20th century, she found a job in a Manhattan knitting mill, emulating her three older sisters, sewing operators in Manhattan garment factories. My relatives joined the apparel business at a time when the industry was one of the only occupations open to poor, young, immigrant women. They worked long hours for little pay in dangerous conditions. This was the era of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire in NYC, an accidental blaze that killed 146 garment workers— mostly young, immigrant women—and spurred a national movement to improve the lives of American factory workers. I immediately thought of the Triangle fire when Rana Plaza collapsed in Bangladesh in 2013, killing 1,134 garment makers. Many of the people killed were poor young women who’d been eking out a living for the first time—like my grandma and her sisters. How could the industry have changed so little in 100 years? I published a poem about this question, which led to a research trip to Bangladesh, during which, I interviewed a number of survivors of Rana Plaza, labor rights activists and lawyers, and women who sewed in Bangladeshi factories. The garment makers I met asked me to tell their stories. I did, in a growing poetry collection, The Price of Our Clothes, first published as a limited- edition chapbook (Perlman Museum) for a multi-media exhibition created with a visual artist. Poems have also been published in journals and magazines, and have been used in classroom presentations. Here are a few questions to explore after reading the five poems: 1. Try reading the poems out loud. How did it feel to read these poems? How did it feel to read the names in “What was Left” and “Kafan”? 2. How has the apparel industry changed in the 100 years between 1911 and 2013 as portrayed in “Blanck and Harris, Shirtwaist Kings” and “The Plight of Bazlus Samad Adnan”? 3. What happened after the 1911 Triangle fire to prevent accidents like this from happening again in the U.S.? Have accidents like this happened since? Where? 4. What happened after the 2013 Rana Plaza collapse to prevent accidents like this from happening again in Bangladesh? Elsewhere? 5. Why is knowing about the history of the Triangle fire and the Rana Plaza collapse important to people interested in working in the fashion industry? If you’re inclined to write in a more associative, speculative way, possibly in story or poem form, here are some writing prompts: 1. Look at the labels on the clothes you’re wearing today to find out where they were made. Imagine what you might ask the people who made your clothes. What might they ask you? What is their day like in relation to yours? 2. Are you a descendant of garment workers? If so, what was the workday like for your ancestor? How has your ancestor’s work affected your relationship to clothes? 3. What might happen if you visited the C.E.O. of a major apparel brand and asked questions about the treatment of garment makers in the factories making clothes for this brand? Imagine finding out about the C.E.O.’s background and ethics during the conversation. 4. Write an elegy for garment workers who died during the pandemic. On March 25th, 1911, a fire destroyed Triangle Shirtwaist, a garment factory on floors 8, 9, and 10 of the Asch building in New York City, U.S.A. The fire caused the death of 146 garment workers. On April 24th, 2013, Rana Plaza, an eight story building in the Upazila of Savar, Dhaka District, Bangladesh, collapsed. Inside the building were five garment factories that made clothes for the world's biggest brands. The collapse killed between 1,134 and 1,175 garment workers. Sisters Read the 1920 census, see my grandmother's name and the names of her sisters squeezed into rows and columns recording their lives after they left Vishnevskaya. Not recorded: how Jewish sisters who spoke only Yiddish stuffed themselves into steerage with cargo and 1,721 fellow passengers, stumbled down the crowded gang-plank onto Ellis Island, followed their father and brothers to the Kaplan apartment where they crammed themselves to breathe in into windowless, motherless, Brooklyn's soot three rooms and one and coal ash, down-the-hall- powdered cement, split-between- sawdust, horse families bathroom manure, car exhaust; breathe out English. Recorded: Alien; Single. Omitted: no education after age eleven. Recorded under Occupation,1920, the sisters are Wage Workers. Minnie assembled dress-shop dresses; Ida sewed shirts for a men's shirt factory; in a waist-shop, Dora made blouses called shirtwaists; Lilly, my grandma, Not recorded: kept the books before 1920, at a knitting mill. the New York sweatshops and mills where these sisters worked: over-packed, no sprinklers, worksites as lacking lack of open fire doors, lack as Triangle of a powerful union — Shirtwaist factory in Manhattan, 1911, where pairs of sisters, Rosie and Sarah, Rosaria and Lucia, Sara and Tessie were caught sewing cuffs and sleeves in the seven rows of forty machines on the ninth story when a lit cigarette turned cotton and linen scraps on the floor into locomoting flames and smoke. Scorched and smothered, they screamed, Aiutami, Helf mikh, Help me, names of loved ones, groped for the only elevator, soon- to-break fire escape, locked door, ninth floor windows. Not recorded: new workplace laws written with ashes of sisters, ashes of 140 co-workers, ashes held in the pockets of Ida, Minnie, Dora, Lilly, me, and possibly you. Blanck and Harris, Shirtwaist Kings "Achieve! Achieve!” —Andrew Carnegie Our immigrant hands know how to cut, sew, fold, manipulate this Golden Land. Not bad for two Manhattanites, Russian Jews once empty-palmed as any other Pig Market greenhorn rooting for a needle-trade job. Our knuckles, too, oozed sweatshop stink until we grabbed the shirt-making market, climbed its laissez-faire ladder to chauffeured cars, servants, mansions on the Hudson, multiple factories. Now employees, relatives, bow: Pardon me, Mr. Harris; good morning, Mr. Blanck. Our pinnacle factory? Triangle. Three lofty floors atop seven stories. All ten command the corner of Green and Washington Place with bones of steel armored in fireproof clay. One of Manhattan's new commercial fortresses — only a block from swank Washington Square. No sooty sweatshop inside a six-foot, pig-pen apartment. Each floor's hundreds of sewing machines are driven by a single electric motor and over a thousand female fingers assembling shirtwaists faster and cheaper than anywhere else in New York City. Triangle: paid eyes and ears to monitor girls whispering, let's take the oath, let's walk out, join the strike, the union, for shorter hours, no night work, wages arranged by committee; paid mouths to smile solidarity, give away nothing; paid prostitutes, pimps, police, to punch out picket line garment workers. For God's sake, those meshugenah protesting bodies block us from entering our own factory. We got these landsmen out of their sweatsh ops. Why are they so ungrateful? What Was Left 500 sewing machines, now melted metal 5 dozen cutter's knives, 5 dozen scissors, now melted metal 1,000,000 freshwater pearl buttons, now quicklime 1,000 lbs. packing paper and boxes, now ashes 10,000 bolts cotton and linen fabric, now ashes 5,000 lbs. cotton and linen fabric scraps, now ashes 2,000 lbs. lumber made into bins, cutting tables, sewing machine tables, now charcoal 300 lbs. tissue paper, now ashes 2,000 shirtwaists, now ashes 1 shirtwaist factory worth approximately $120,000 before the fire on March 25th, 1911 1 negative bank account balance 1 insurance policy worth approximately $200,000, enough to cover losses from last year's workers' strike 2 Triangle owners: Max Blanck and Isaac Harris 5 inspectors, ignored 1 burnt door, its bolt in locked position, found at the main entrance 2 owners who swear they never locked the door 2 counts of manslaughter 1 defense lawyer, Max Steuer, former garment worker, favorite attorney for NYC politicians 2 acquitted Triangle owners, Blanck and Harris 146 dead garment workers, each considered property: Lizzie Adler, Anna Altman, Anna Ardito , Rossie Bassino, Vincenza Bellota, Vincenzo Benenti, Essie Bernstein, Jacob Bernstein, Morris Bernstein, Gussie Bierman, Abraham Binevitz, Rosie Brenman, Sarah Brenman, Ida Brodsky, Sara Brodsky, Ada Brooks, Laura Brunetta, Josephine Cammarata, Frances Caputto, Josephine Carlisi, Albina Caruso, Josie Castello, Rose Cirrito, Anna Cohen, Antonina Colletti, Dora Dochman, Kalman Downic, Celia Eisenberg, Dora Evans, Rebecca Feibisch, Yetta Fichtenhultz, Daisy Fitze, Max Florin, Tina Frank, Rosie Freedman, Molly Gerstein, Celia Gettlin, Esther Goldstein, Lena Goldstein, Mary Goldstein, Yetta Goldstein, Irene Grameatassio, Bertha Greb, Dinah Greenberg, Rachel Grossman, Rosie Grosso, Esther Harris, Mary Herman, Esther Hochfield, Fannie Hollander, Pauline Horowitz, Ida Jakofsky, Tessie Kaplan, Becky Kappelman, Ida Kenowitz, Becky Kessler, Jacob Kline, Bertha Kuhler, Tiller Kupfersmith, Sarah Kupla, Benny Kuritz, Annie L'Abbato, Fannie Lansner, Maria Mary Laventhal, Jennie Lederman, Nettie Lefkowitz, Max Lehrer, Sam Lehrer, Kate Leone, Giuseppa Lauletti, Rosie Lemarck, Jennie Levin, Pauline Levine, Catherine