Bread and Roses - Wikipedia
Bread and Roses - Wikipedia
"Bread and Roses" is a political slogan as well as the name of an associated poem and song. It originated in
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.
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
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 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 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
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.
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.
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.
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 is since most often sung 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 3 (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
Anna LoPizzo, woman striker killed during the Lawrence textile strike Organized labour
portal
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
Rose (symbolism)
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
3. Zwick, Jim (2003). "Behind the Song: Bread and Roses". Sing Out! The Folk Song Magazine. 46: 92–93.
ISSN 0037-5624 (https://search.worldcat.org/issn/0037-5624) . OCLC 474160863 (https://search.world
cat.org/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. 16. Immanuel News and Wiley Periodicals, Inc.:
59–68. doi:10.1111/wusa.12023 (https://doi.org/10.1111%2Fwusa.12023) . ISSN 1089-7011 (https://se
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5. The American Magazine (https://books.google.com/books?id=LGhEAQAAMAAJ) . Crowell-Collier
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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 (https://hdl.handl
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ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=LAH19101102.2.22&e=-------en--20--1--txt-txIN--------1) . Los Angeles
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-daily-times-press-feb-17-1915-p-8/) . Middletown Daily Times Press. February 17, 1915. Retrieved
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(https://books.google.com/books?id=D3lPAQAAMAAJ) . Littell's Spirit of the Magazines and Annuals:
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Nights (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/41110/41110-h/41110-h.htm) . London. "The quote comes
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Moḥammad En-Nowwájee († 1454) who attributes the quote to Galen. See pp. 167 (footnote 195), pp.
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9) . Vol. III, No. 14. The Progressive Woman. p. 15.
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of Group Worship (https://books.google.com/books?id=-0eaJYb0mKwC&q=Kohlsaat+bread+roses) .
Womans Press. p. 78.
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m/books?id=6vtPafZy1PsC) . Courier Corporation (Original Copyright 1960). pp. 70–71.
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41. Burgess, Nella (May 15, 1925). "River forest Women's Club" (https://newspaperarchive.com/us/illinois/o
ak-park/oak-park-oak-parker/1925/05-15/page-18) . The Oak Parker. p. 18. Retrieved March 3, 2019.
46. ´Silber, Irwin (March 11, 1999). "Re: Happy!; Bread and Roses" (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!orig
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Usenet: APC&1'0'7c92df7e'[email protected] (news:APC&1'0'7c92df7e'[email protected]) . Retrieved
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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."
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62. Schneir, Miriam (1972). Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings. Vintage Books.
External links
Bread & Roses: The Strike Led and Won by Women (http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45b/073.htm
l)