{"id":14341,"date":"2020-12-28T12:07:52","date_gmt":"2020-12-28T17:07:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/?p=14341"},"modified":"2020-12-28T12:10:41","modified_gmt":"2020-12-28T17:10:41","slug":"the-south-philadelphia-food-riots-of-1917","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/2020\/12\/the-south-philadelphia-food-riots-of-1917\/","title":{"rendered":"The South Philadelphia Food Riots of 1917"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Food prices had been spiraling out of control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur children and our husbands are not getting enough to eat,\u201d declared Pauline Goldberg, 27, of 449 Durfor Street in South Philadelphia. \u201cIt\u2019s up to us to do something.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Would that \u201csomething\u201d be akin to New York City\u2019s food riot? That started with a march on City Hall on February 20th with women from the Lower East Side chanting \u201cGive us bread! We are starving! Feed our children!\u201d Then, according to Marie Ganz, protesters turned violent on the profiteering street peddlers. \u201cCart after cart was overturned, and the pavements were covered with trampled goods. The women used their black shopping bags as clubs, striking savagely at the men\u2026 Onions, potatoes, cabbages flew through the air\u2026 Policemen came rushing upon the scene, and they, too, were pelted with whatever was at hand. Surely a thousand women \u2014 perhaps twice as many \u2014 were in that mad struggle.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the women of South Philadelphia learned about the \u201cwave of food riots\u201d that \u201cswept over\u201d New York \u201cfrom the lower East Side all the way to Harlem,” they were primed for their own action. But \u201cwe are not going to raid shops or to riot,\u201d promised Goldberg. \u201cThe riots in New York, have not influenced us in the least.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe do not expect to have to use force,\u201d she told a reporter. \u201cAlready we have got in touch with about 500 women who have promised to cooperate with us. The others will have to cooperate with us. We are going to make them. No, I don\u2019t think the police will interfere with us. They are pretty tired of paying high prices themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Acme Food Store, 2136 South 7th Street (between Jackson and Winton Sts), May 12, 1913 (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Up in Kensington, Catherine Ross Munro, aka \u201cMother Munro,\u201d founder of the Cohocksink Mothers\u2019 Club, concurred as to a peaceful approach. Munro drafted a telegram to Mayor Thomas B. Smith requesting his quick return home from vacation in Florida. \u201cThe working men\u2019s wives of Kensington met at my home last evening and made an urgent appeal for aid to save their families from starvation,\u201d it read. Munro, too, preferred respectful diplomacy: \u201cThe housewives of the northeastern section do not believe in rioting.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But not all of the strikers agreed when they saw the price increases posted by vendors. Overnight, the price of carp jumped from 10 to 18 cents per pound. Onions rose from 2 1\/2 to 14 cents. Word of this, and the knowledge that other shoppers who chose not to join the boycott were reduced to purchasing chicken heads for 15 cents each, and pairs of chicken feet 10 to 12 cents. \u201cEven entrails were sold from the pushcarts and, apparently, were regarded by many of the poor as their only hope against starvation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of this sent \u201cseveral hundred Jewish women\u201d in South Philadelphia over the edge. According to the Evening Public Ledger<\/em> on February 22nd, crowds \u201cswooped down upon push carts and invaded shops on Seventh street, above Morris, and attempted to destroy the wares. Intermittent battles between the housewives and food merchants raged until policeman were rushed to the scene and restored order. \u2018It is robbery! Robbery! Robbery!\u2018 screamed the women, hurling the offending fish from their barrels and attempting to spoil the food by sprinkling kerosene upon it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Acme Food Store, 2136 South 7th Street (between Jackson and Winton Sts.), May 12, 1913 (PhillyHistory.org)

<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn the shop of Hyman Zebulsky, 1636 South Seventh street, the live carp were thrown against the walls and into the street. \u2026 In Louis Detofsky\u2019s meat shop, at 1634 South Seventh Street., a more severe battle raged. Kerosene was thrown upon the floor in the melee and pint bottles of the oil, secreted about the women\u2019s clothes, were broken. Outside the pushcarts of produce on the curb were overturned.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe spirit of open rebellion against food dealers\u201d spread up and down 7th Street from Reed to Ritner; along 4th Street from Bainbridge to Snyder. Mobs of women \u201coverturned push carts and threatened injury\u201d and according to the Inquirer<\/em>, \u201cstore owners were beaten and large quantities of food were destroyed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Organizers considered marching on City Hall, promised a crowd of 15,000 women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Curbstone Market, 4th and Fitzwater, 1914 (PhillyHistory)
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRioting Won\u2019t Help\u201d advised an editorial headline in the Evening Public Ledger<\/em>. But apparently it did help\u2014getting the attention of City Hall and Harrisburg. Mayor Smith soon sanctioned a bill aimed at buying food and selling it at cost to ward off hunger. The legislature considered a \u201cstate-wide probe\u201d as to the causes for exorbitant prices. The newspapers reported on speculators holding vast quantities of food in scores of railroad cars and warehouses. By the third week of March, the papers traced food price conspiracies\u201d and the District Attorney promised intervention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Progress\u2014or so it seemed. Yet, disturbances continued a few days later when several hundred women attacked the food store owned by David Cohen at 4th and Mercy Streets, destroying its contents and assaulting the proprietor. Among those arrested: Pauline Goldberg, who, the newspaper reported, had \u201cbeen arrested on the charge of rioting twice before in the last two weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe problem of skyrocketing food prices was never really \u2018solved,\u201d explains labor historian William Frieburger, \u201cit was simply absorbed into the far more catastrophic crisis.\u201d President Woodrow Wilson made no reference to America\u2019s food crisis in his second inaugural address on March 5th. Rather, he warned of the nation\u2019s imminent entry into the \u201cGreat War\u201d then raging in Europe. \u201cTo be indifferent to it, or independent of it, was out of the question,\u201d declared Wilson. And in another month, the United States would enter the war, committing to sacrifices that included, but were hardly limited to, the nation\u2019s food supplies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Illumination of Food Sign – North Side of City Hall. October 4, 1917. (PhillyHistory,org) <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

[Sources: \u201cMob of Women Wails Protest on Food Costs,\u201d Evening Public Ledger<\/em>, February 20, 1917; \u201cFood Riots Sweep Through New York, Ghetto to Harlem,\u201d The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em>, February 21, 1917; \u201cThe New York Food Riots,\u201c The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em>, February 22, 1917; \u201cCall Mayor Home In Crisis on Food,\u201d Evening Public Ledger<\/em>, February 22, 1917; \u201cRioting Won\u2019t Help,\u201c Evening Public Ledger<\/em>, February 22, 1917; \u201cWomen Destroy Food In Frantic War on Stores,\u201d The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em>, February 23, 1917;  \u201cRelief For East from Food Stress Seen as West Speeds up Heavy Trains of Supplies,\u201d Evening Public Ledger<\/em>, February 23, 1917; \u201cMayor for Sale of Food at Cost,\u201d Evening Public Ledger<\/em>, February 26, 1917; \u201cPromised Relief Halts Food Riots,\u201d The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em>, February 27, 1917; \u201cFood Speculation Bared in Patton\u2019s Report to House,\u201d The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em>,  March 1, 1917; Says Speculators Hold Food in Cars, The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em>, , March 2, 1917; Food Riots Break Out in South Philadelphia,\u201d The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em>, March 2,1917; Mayor Tells Plan for Cut-Rate Food,\u201d The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em>, March 5, 1917; Food Price Probers Trace Conspiracies\u201d The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em>, March 18, 1917; Marie Ganz, Rebels Into Anarchy\u2014And Out Again, (New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company, 1919); \u201cWar prosperity and hunger: The New York food riots of 1917,\u201d William Frieburger, Labor History, March 1984, Vol. 25, No. 2.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Food prices had been spiraling out of control. \u201cOur children and our husbands are not getting enough to eat,\u201d declared Pauline Goldberg, 27, of 449 Durfor Street in South Philadelphia. \u201cIt\u2019s up to us to do something.\u201d Would that \u201csomething\u201d be akin to New York City\u2019s food riot? That started with a march on City […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14341\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}