Anarchist demonstration in union Square, New York, 1914 photo gallery

Anarchist Alexander Berkman addresses the crowd

Photographs of a large anarchist rally in union Square, New York City, with Alexander Berkman addressing the crowd, on 11 July 1914.

Over 5,000 people attended the mass memorial meeting called by the Anti-Militarist League for Berg, Hanson, and Caron, the three anarchists killed in the Lexington Avenue explosion. Over 800 policemen monitored the meeting, while Berkman, Abbott, Edelsohn, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Carlo Tresca, David Sullivan and Charles Plunkett all spoke for their dead comrades.1

  • 1. Thanks to Battlescarred for the clarifying information.
Anarchist Alexander Berkman addresses the crowd
Anarchist demonstration in union Square, New York, 1914 photo gallery
Photograph of the demonstration from an office by the square
Rebecca Edelsohn addresses the crowd

Comments

Battlescarred
May 7 2011 16:21

On July 11, 1914 over 5,000 people attended a mass memorial meeting called by the Anti-Militarist League for Berg, Hanson, and Caron, the three anarchists killed in the Lexington Avenue explosion. Over 800 policemen monitored the meeting, while Berkman, Abbott, Edelsohn, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Carlo Tresca, David Sullivan and Charles Plunkett all spoke for their dead comrades

Harrison
May 7 2011 16:59

anarchists should dress in suits again. enough of these black hoodies...

commentary
May 7 2011 17:04

similar pictures here: http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~jmmoran/tarrytown.htm

Steven.
May 7 2011 17:18
commentary wrote:
similar pictures here: http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~jmmoran/tarrytown.htm

thanks for that, I added one of the pictures which was of the same event

Battlescarred
May 7 2011 18:04
Harrison Myers wrote:
anarchists should dress in suits again. enough of these black hoodies...

Quite right. Look how well turned out Durruti was, for example.

Steven.
May 7 2011 18:55
Battlescarred wrote:
Harrison Myers wrote:
anarchists should dress in suits again. enough of these black hoodies...

Quite right. Look how well turned out Durruti was, for example.

those hats would block out CCTV as well!

Arbeiten
May 25 2011 01:04

yeah but you would look like a bougey twat. Sorry to get all 'sectarian' (lulz), but there is nothing I hate more (obvious hyperbole, I hate loads) than going on a march and seeing some dufus in a bloody suit. Invariably a posh 'marxist'!!!!

Harrison
May 25 2011 08:43

yes but think how sharp it would look if all the anarchists turned up in suits. (suit bloc lol)

also, suits used to be the normal outfit for workers at one point

syndicalist
May 25 2011 14:40

A couple of brief comments:

1. In this link http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~jmmoran/tarrytown.htm 14th photo down it reads:

"Alexander Berkman and Helen Harris arriving in Tarrytown, New Jersey June 1914"

It is actually Tarrytown, NEW YORK. At the time, the (still) vicious Phelps-Dodge Corporation (copper mining) owners lived in Mansions in Tarrytown.

2. The photo on the Rocker book:

In the garment industry of that time, it was usually the bosses (of different varities) who wore ties AND the craft worker - the "cutter". The one who cut patterns to be sewed. It's hard for me to tell if this was a pre-arranged posed photo. I tend to think it was as the (male) shopworkers (prolly pressers) are wearing their vests (which were often taken off when at work). The workers all seem to be secular (non-religious) Jews, which would indicate that some their garb was put on for the photo. Those workers who were more pious oftent wore their vests and a head cover ("yamulke") and married women would wear a wig ("shittel"). But most pious married women did not work in the shop.

Schwarz
May 25 2011 14:46

Yeah the suit and hat thing was a workers' style at the time. Here is labor historian Joshua Freeman on workers in suits, arguing that is has to do with 19th century notions of manliness and bourgeois respectability:

Quote:
For the turn-of-the-century skilled construction worker, manliness meant independence, mutuality, and pride of craft. Worksite photographs of early twentieth-century carpenters, for example, show neatly dressed men, wearing debry hats and sometimes white shirts and ties, carefully maintaining an erect, dignified bearing. This self-presentation... corresponded to a political construct in which building tradesmen, like of craftsmen, closely linked self-respect, manhood and citizenship. Reinforcing one another, all three ultimately rested on economic independence, which was seen as the fruit of skill, hard work, sobriety and organization.

[...]

The International Association of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers, while not hesitant to use explosives against open-shop employers, took it upon itself to promote bourgeois respectability among its members in other regards. One business agent claimed: "The organization has made men out of a lot of irresponsible bums.... I remember when a bridgeman wearing a white collar couldn't get a job. The foreman would say that he was a dude, who didn't know his trade. It's different now. If a man is well-dressed... the foreman will size him up and conclude he is a decent fellow."

This quest for respectability, to dress well, was both and expression of workers sense of their own dignity and an effort to meet middle-class norms, part and parcel of the struggle by workers and unions, as Sidney Hillman once put it, to "establish themselves as a full-fledged part of organized society." It was evident at the top of the labor movement in the please leaders like Samuel Gompers, John Mitchell, and John L. Lewis took in rubbing elbows with the rich while decked out in their finery. At the bottom i could be seen in the jackets and ties unionists so often wore to demonstrations.

rat
May 25 2011 22:13

That demonstration had the perfect combination — suits and fucking big pile of rocks.

petey
May 25 2011 22:30

fabulous stuff, both pictures and comments above