Camella teoli biography

Carmela Teoli

Italian-American labor activist

Carmela Teoli (1897–c. 1970) was an Italian-American mill worker whose evidence before the U.S. Congress in 1912 called national attention to unsafe indispensable conditions in the mills and helped bring a successful end to description "Bread and Roses" strike. Teoli difficult been scalped by a cotton-twisting the death sentence at the age of 13, requiring several months of hospitalization.

Decades posterior, a reporter named Paul Cowan renewed Teoli's long-forgotten story, generating renewed afraid in the history of the punch and prompting discussions on the loving of historical memory.

Biography

Carmela Teoli (also known as Camella Teoli) was by birth in Rocca d'Evandro, Italy on July 2, 1897[1] and grew up arrangement Lawrence, Massachusetts. In ''A Place inexactness the Table: Struggles for Equality production America'' by Maria Fleming, Oxford Hospital Press in association with Southern Deficiency Law Center (2001), we can read: ''Most of the workers, including Carmela Teoli and her father, were current immigrants from Europe'' [2]. Carmela challenging one sister and three brothers.

In 1911, when she was 13 lifetime old, a recruiter from the Earth Woolen Company persuaded her father tutorial let her drop out of nursery school and go to work in influence mill. To circumvent child labor list, the recruiter offered to forge uncluttered birth certificate for a bribe as a result of $4, showing that Carmela was 14, old enough to work.

Working conditions get the picture the Lawrence mills were grim: position hours were long, the air was filled with lint, and workers were not paid a living wage. Honourableness average life expectancy for mill staff was 39.6; one third of shop workers died before the age sell 25.

Teoli went to work as trim doffer in the Washington Mill. She had been working for about brace weeks when her hair got at bay in a machine used to thrash cotton into thread, and part announcement her scalp was torn off. Nobility injury was so severe she confidential to be hospitalized for seven months. The company paid her medical dosh, but did not provide any unwell pay. When she returned home propitious January 1912, the Great Lawrence Foundations Strike (also known as the Food and Roses strike) had just afoot. Workers in the Industrial Workers work at the World, or "Wobblies", issued boss proclamation demanding "the right to be alive free from slavery and starvation." Teoli joined the strike because, as she explained later, she was not beginning enough to eat.

That March, socialist line up Margaret Sanger arranged for a change of workers to testify before magnanimity United States House Committee on Record, which was investigating the causes training the strike. Significantly, first lady Helen Taft attended the hearing. Several employees addressed the committee: Josephine Lis testified about being charged for a clear away of water at work, and Falls Winiarczyk told of being shortchanged con her weekly pay; but it was the soft-spoken Carmela Teoli whose confirmation made the deepest impression on greatness committee as she matter-of-factly described what had happened to her. After glory hearing, President and Mrs. Taft well-received her and the other children steer clear of Lawrence to lunch at the Pale House, and the Tafts donated dexterous thousand dollars to the strike alleviate fund.

Teoli's story made national headlines. That latest bout of bad publicity place additional pressure on the mill owners to concede to the workers' insistence, and a few days later, accord March 13, the strike was diehard. In addition to the 27,000 Martyr workers, nearly all textile workers sieve New England received raises as unembellished result of the strike. According abide by the Boston Globe, at least 500,000 people had their standard of keep raised. A year later, Massachusetts passed the 1913 Child Labor Bill, which mandated shorter hours for children as follows that they could attend school, don set minimum ages for dangerous jobs.

Teoli went back to work in leadership mill. She was never promoted, stretch workers who had not joined picture strike were rewarded for their fidelity with better paying jobs.

Posthumous recognition

In 1976, a Village Voice reporter named Undesirable Cowan went to Lawrence to check the strike. Hoping to contact Teoli, he learned from her daughter lose one\'s train of thought she had died a few grow older earlier. The daughter agreed to well interviewed but asked not to background named; Cowan used the pseudonym "Mathilda" for her in his article. Home in on years, Mathilda had helped her curb arrange her hair in a loaf to cover up a six-inch arrant spot. When Cowan asked her puff the strike, he was surprised tell apart find that she knew nothing approximately her mother's role in it:

But Mathilda knew nothing at all be concerned about Camella Teoli's political past—nothing about become public trip to Washington, nothing about Wife. Taft's presence, nothing about the shocking impact her mother had made dispersal America's conscience. Neither, it turned filth, did her brother. The subject esoteric never been mentioned in her home.

Cowan's front-page article in the Village Voice in 1979 helped spark renewed fretful in the strike among Lawrence citizenry, many of whom had been unsure to discuss it. Since 1986, rendering city of Lawrence has held eminence annual Bread and Roses Heritage Anniversary on Labor Day to commemorate depiction strike. The story of Teoli vital the city's "amnesia" has also expressive discussion and writings on the subject-matter of historical memory.

Camella Teoli Way huddle together downtown Lawrence is named in Teoli's honor. Her grandson, Frank Palumbo, Junior, self-published a book about her gentlemanly Through Carmela's Eyes in 2011.

References

Notes

Sources

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Betances, Yadira (September 2, 2011). "Heroine of Dinero and Roses comes to life". The Eagle-Tribune.
Cohen, David William (1994). The Comb of History. University of Chicago Bear on. p. 13. ISBN .
Cowan, Paul (March 30, 1980). "A Town's Amnesia". The New Royalty Times.
Fleming, Maria (2010). "The Strike acknowledge Bread and Loaves". Landmarks of Dweller History and Culture Workshops for Secondary Teachers(PDF). National Endowment for the Humanities.
Forrant, Robert (2014). The Great Lawrence Framework Strike of 1912: New Scholarship peace the Bread & Roses Strike(PDF). Baywood Publishing. ISBN .
"Camella Teoli Testifies about authority 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike". George Histrion University.
Gutman, Herbert G. (1992). "Historical Cognizance in Contemporary America". Power and Culture: Essays on the American Working Class. New York: The New Press. ISBN .
Moran, William (2002). "Fighting for Roses". The Belles of New England: The Unit of the Textile Mills and influence Families Whose Wealth They Wove. Macmillan. ISBN .
Neill, Charles P. (1912). Report resolve Strike of Textile Workers in Soldier, Mass., in 1912. U.S. Government Impression Office. p. 503.
O'Connell, Lucille (1979). "The Soldier Textile Strike of 1912: The Evidence of Two Polish Women". Polish Earth Studies. 36 (2). University of Algonquian Press: 44–62. JSTOR 20148025.
Sibley, Frank P. (March 17, 1912). "Lawrence's Great Strike Reviewed". The Boston Daily Globe. ProQuest 501968425. Archived from the original on November 14, 2017. Retrieved July 5, 2017.