THE INHERITANCE

[Music] Oh, son. [Music] [Music] Mama, don't you cry. Go to sleep. [Music] Today is born out of yesterday. And there's no birth without pain. [Music] Spring 191, 16 years old, coming to America with five words of English. My name is Zena Gurvich. Impossible language. I'll never learn it. My name is Zena Gurovich. My name is In the old country. I work like an animal. And even before my children are born, the mark is on them. Animal. Before God, I swear my children will not live as I have lived. Freedom doesn't come like a bird on the wing. Doesn't come down like the summer rain. Freedom. Freedom is a hard one thing. You've got to work for it. Fight for it day and night for it. And every generation got to win it again. Pass it on to your children. Mother, pass it on to your children. Brother, you got to work for it. Fight for it day and night for it. Pass it on to your children. Pass it on. [Music] New arrivals scheduled for examination will present themselves with their documents. Find the line matching the letter on your tag. Name a room bial. Place of birth. Bodessa. How much money you got? No, understand. Money. Diero. How much money? We've got 5,000 to process today. So, let's keep these lines moving. You got exactly 2 minutes to ask him 32 questions and finish health inspection. Keep an eye out for TB. We're getting a lot of it lately. Name? Casima Sinovich. Spell it. Please. Skip it. We'll make it Simpson. Please God, let nothing go wrong. Let them not notice the baby's runny nose. Let them take us into America. [Music] Why do you keep asking me what it's going to be like? I told you a thousand times. The streets pave with gold and the houses all marble. Yeah. Yeah. Even the toilet. I is this a country? Golden America. Learn, study, pay attention. Keep your eyes open. You hear? This is golden America, where millionaires grow on trees like little apples. me around again willy around around. The music is dreamy. It's peaches and creamy. Oh, don't let my feet touch the ground. I Is this a country? As true as I'm standing here, one family, Vanderbilt, has got seven houses on Fifth Avenue. Also, in case they need a little fresh air, a dump on Long Island and a hole in the wall at Newport, not to mention a 60 room shack in North Carolina. I read in the paper, just to take care of the grounds, they spend more than the whole Department of Agriculture. So, let it be a lesson. Save your money. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Official New York City housing survey 1905. We find it difficult to convey conditions in the new immigrant neighborhoods. Darkness and dampness and dirt. dirt and discomfort and disease, dtheria and death. Malberry Street, 17 of us in four rooms. Uncle Antonio from Naples, Aunt Bianca and the kids sleeping in the parlor. If I ever get a boyfriend, where can we go to hold hands? into the park with the pigeons. My dear, there are certain rules of etiquette one simply does not question. A lady does not show her ankle or raise her voice. If unmarried, a girl must be accompanied by a chaperone. A female relative, a maiden aunt perhaps, is considered quite satisfactory. Naturally, the best and safest thing to do is to stay at home and help mother about the house. 12 hours a day. Mama makes 50 cents. I make a dime. Louis makes a nickel. Laying down track for the westbound train. Stacking up timber in the state of Maine. Digging out coal in the West Virginia hills. Hammering steel in the Pittsburgh Mills. [Music] Immigrants from Austria and Italy. Immigrants from Ria on the Baltic Sea. Greeneyed Slovaks, blue-eyed Swedes, Irishman from Limrich, Englishmen from Leeds. [Music] 6 day week in a 12-hour day and it's welcome boys to the USA. Dollar a day for a factory hand and it's welcome ladies to the promised land. [Music] Immigrants and the sons of immigrants putting down roots, hanging on. Stubborn is the tree that pushes its way up through the rock. Acrobats and clowns, rascals and lovers, builders and dreamers, leaving their signature on the cities. From Bratislava and Budapest, from Calabria and County Cork, they came dreaming of gold in the streets. And finding no miracles, they made their own. The miracle of friendship. The miracle of laughter. The miracle of the generations. [Music] The miracle of learning. Listen. You want to hear the presidents? George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Professor Genius. What else did you learn? Daniel Webster. Quote, "Justice is the great interest of man on earth." From your mouth to God's ears. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Golden America, half dream and half nightmare. When I die, a bobin in my hand so I can keep on working in the promised land. I got the blues. I got the blues. I got the winds for cotton blues. I got the blues. I got the blues. I got the winds cotton blues. Lord, it's fooling. You know and I know you work Tom Watson got to work like hell 2 million children in the mills and the mines. 6 million grown-ups unemployed. Why hire a man for a dollar when you can hire a kid for a dime? I was taught in my youth that it was the height of vulgarity to discuss money. A professor in Chicago came up with a few statistics. An American family cannot adequately survive on less than $900 a year. The average working man earns about 400. When the union's inspiration through the workers's blood shall run, there can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun. But what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one? For the union makes us strong. [Music] Solidarity forever. [Music] Forever. The garment workers of New York keeping alive a tradition going back to the Philadelphia printers who formed a union before Washington was president. Immigrants and the sons of immigrants carrying on the heritage of the Boston Carpenters who fought for the 10-hour day while Missouri was still Indian territory. [Music] Hold the Lord for we are coming. You be strong. Side by side will battle onward. Victory will come. As spokesman for the mine owners, I assure you the rights and interests of the laboring man will be protected and cared for not by the labor agitator but by the Christian man to whom God in his infinite wisdom is given control of the property interests of this country. Freedom doesn't come like a bird on the wing doesn't come down like the summer rain. Freedom. Freedom is a hard one thing. You've got to work for it, fight for it, day and night for it. And every generation got to win it again. Pass it on to your children. Mother, pass it on to your children. Brother came to Chicago. Green off the boat 1910. Got myself a job at a men's clothing shop. Hart Chaffner and Marks. Sit at the machine shaking in your boots. Scared of being fired for talking, sneezing, looking at the foreman crosseyed. [Applause] Busy season. Get up before dawn. Come home in the dark. The children's faces you don't look on except when they're sleeping. And then the slack season [Applause] speed up. You can go crazy with the speed up. Turning out more more more for the same money. [Applause] Just like this, all of a sudden, the foreman announces they're cutting the peace rate for seeming pants. You got a wife and kids to support. You keep your mouth shut. Lucy, you going to just sit there and take it? Not me. I'm not taking it. I'm walking out. Sure, it's all right for them. A handful of girls. I got kids to feed. They warned us. Walk out and you're blacklisted. Finished in Chicago. Why doesn't the union do something? The so-called union, my boy, is strictly for the cutters, the aristocrats. They're not interested in greenholds. What am I doing in here taking over their work? I ought to be out there with them. What do we do? I don't know what you're going to do. I know what I'm going to do. Out. I'm walking out. Do you hear? Do you hear the latest? 3,000 out. Six more shops out. 18,000. 35,000. You hear? 40,000 out. Heard a rumor the union's looking to make a deal under the table and sell us down the river. I'm as mildmannered girl as can be and I've never done them harm that I can see. Still on me they put a van and they throw me in the can. They go wild simply wild over me. Four months of broken heads and empty stomachs. Four months out in the freezing street. Four months standing together, standing solid. I see Charlie out there walking in the line. Up comes a foreman. Gives him a punch and yells, "Go home, troublemaker." So Charlie says, "I got my rights." Rights. They gave him a bullet in the head. They gave them. [Music] How do you do, sir? My name is Jane Adams. I'm a social worker. I wonder, Mr. Shaner, how long it's been since you saw with your own eyes the conditions under which these people work for you? So I went down to my factory and I looked and then I wasn't surprised they were on strike. I was only surprised they waited so long. Shan is willing to arbitrate grievances and wage demands. What does Hillman say? All we want is to be treated as human beings, not machines. Arbitration is the first step. All right. So, they got arbitration. They got a little security at heart shaper and marks. I still the rest of us right back where we started. You think this is the end? Take it from me. This is only the beginning. Something in the wind blowing east from Chicago. A restless murmur running through the shops. Something being born. A beginning. A hope. New York 1912. Heart of the men's clothing market. 60,000 vest makers and button hole makers, pressers and pants makers, cutters and tailor. Slapped in jail by the police. bailed out by a tough little labor lawyer named Fierella LaGuardia. You hear? We got a settlement. A 53-hour week. A big present. They gave us ice in the winter. Listen, whatever you get, you have to fight for it. If I am wrong, if my information is mistaken, please correct me, which I will appreciate. Thank you. Something in the wind. Something struggling to be born. Baltimore strike and sellout. Rochester. Sellout and heartbreak. [Music] The union's having a convention. Nashville, Tennessee. Why Nashville? The biggest locals on New York, Chicago, Baltimore. That's the reason. We've got complaints, so they're making it tough for us to get out there. So why Nashville? Why not Alaska? Borrow somehow scrape together the money for train fair. Nazville all out for Naz. Locals from New York, Boston, Rochester, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, and Baltimore at the link with the stools and will not be seated. We were out on strike. We did not need. So, how can we pay sues? I'm in a balcony have the right to speak. Baltimore's still out on strike. Brother in the balcony is out of order. Chicago insists that the brother in the balcony be heard. Delegate from Chicago is out of order. Listen, we just came in from Nashville. Chicago walked out of convention. Yan and New York and Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati. 75% of the membership walked out. Really? Is it me? Holding their own convention here. We're setting up our own union. [Music] It'll be an outlaw outfit. Won't even be an air for Sydney. You're out of your mind. Staking your head on a wild gamble. In the month of December, in the year 1914, they gathered at Webster Hall and they took the gamble. It was our dream to give security to our members. Security within the framework of liberty, of individual freedom. Lincoln said, "A nation cannot exist half slave and half free. Neither can a man. We cannot exist free politically but slaves industrially." Dear brother, we just formed an organizing committee for the amalgamating of clothing workers out here in Milwaukee. Two French button hole makers, three Jewish cutters, a Siberian, a Bohemian, two Italian pants makers, a Lithuanian [ __ ] two Po, a sweet and a Hungarian. Starting with nothing with empty pockets and a barrel of hope. organizing New York and Chicago, Wisconsin and New Jersey, Baltimore and Boston, Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio, Montreal, Toronto, Pennsylvania. [Music] Dear Brother Hillman, maybe you can come to our assistance. We had a little strike down here in Philadelphia. Our business agent got thrown in jail. I haven't got to buy postage stamps, much less pay the fine. Worse comes to worse, don't worry. I'll hawk my overcoat. Listen, I'm a boss, so don't quote me. Tell you the God's truth, the union is the best thing ever happened in this industry. We've got arbitration. We can come together like human beings, set standards, set rates in a civilized manner. You know what I mean? Since we went union, we never had a strike. January 1st, 1915. Special to Mccclure's magazine. Midway through the Wilson administration, there are indications that the nation is seeing the beginnings of a new freedom. a weakening of the grip of monopolies by the passage of the Corrupt Practices Act, the Clayton Antitrust Act, workman's compensation, child labor laws. Heat. Heat. [Music] Immigrants [Music] and the sons of immigrants. Fishermen from Nantucket. Factory hands from the Lower East Side. Farm boys from Arkansas. Goodbye M. Goodbye Paw. Goodbye mule with the old hehaw. I may not know what the war is about, but I bet by gosh I'll soon find out. I'll bring you a hun and a Kaiser, too. And that's about all one fell can do. I may not know what the wars about, but I bet by God I'll soon find out. Oh my darling, don't you fear. I'll bring you a gun for a souvenir. [Music] US Army dead and missing 130,500 wounded 234,300. US Steel profits 2 billion [Music] in the backwash of war, depression, and a rising hysteria. In a single year, 61 murders by lynching. Revolution in Russia touching off panic at home. Victims of the Palmer raids, their houses ransacked without search warrants. 3,000 foreignb born arrested, denied lawyers, held without charges for 3 months. in Pittsburgh and Gary, Indiana. It was the 12-hour day. Take it or leave it. And you better take it if you know it's good for you. Tell me, what is a vigilante man? What is a vigilante man? Does he carry a claw and a gun in his hand? Would he beat your brother and sister down? Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America to AFL. In closed, find our contribution, $100,000 for the relief of the Steel Strikers. We know that this is only the beginning of one of the greatest attacks ever directed against American labor.