Bread and Roses

thumb|"As we come marching, marching, in the beauty of the day, / A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill-lofts gray"—first lines of Bread and Roses. Image of workers marching during the Lawrence textile strike.|upright=1.2

"Bread and Roses" is a political slogan associated with women's suffrage and the labor movement, as well as 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" 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."<!-- 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 speaker 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. Todd, as a factory inspector, represented the working women and discussed the need for laws concerning wages, work conditions, and hours.

It is in Todd's speech on the condition of working women that the phrase is first mentioned. A young hired girl expressed to Todd, who was staying with the 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.

Women's Trade Union League

thumb|The Women's Trade Union League was central in promoting the [[eight-hour day, a living wage and improved working conditions.|upright]]

Helen Todd became involved in the fall of 1910 with the Chicago garment workers' strike, led by the Women's Trade Union League of Chicago. 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. Todd and the president of the Women's Trade Union League Margaret Robins made a number of speeches during the strike and manned the picket lines with the thousands of striking garment workers. During the strike, it was later reported that a sign was seen with the slogan "We want bread – and roses, too."

In 1911 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. The women's suffrage campaign proved successful, and the right for women to vote passed in the state in November 1911. During the California campaign, the suffragettes carried banners with several slogans; one was "Bread for all, and Roses, too!"—the same phrase that Todd used in her speech the previous summer.

Oppenheim's poem

The phrase was subsequently picked up by James Oppenheim and incorporated into his poem 'Bread and Roses', After the poem’s publication in 1911, the poem was published again in July 1912 in The Survey with the same attribution as in 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."

Lawrence textile strike

thumb|The children of Lawrence textile strikers, who were sent to New York City for temporary care, march with banners in solidarity with their parents back in Massachusetts, 1911.|upright=1|right

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!.<!-- 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. A month later in June 1912 Rose Schneiderman of the Women's Trade Union League of New York discussed the phrase in a speech she gave in Cleveland in support of the Ohio women's campaign for equal suffrage.|source=

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."

Galen of Pergamon

The source of Helen Todd's inspiration for the phrase "bread and roses" is unknown. 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, 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." 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. 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. 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:

Poem

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. The first performance of Kohlsaat's song was at the River Forest Women's Club where she was the chorus director. The song also migrated to the college campus. At some women's colleges, the song became part of their traditional song set.

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The song gained a larger audience after World War II with its publication in January 1952 in Sing Out!. Composer Christian Wolff wrote a piano piece entitled "Bread and Roses" (1976) based on the strike song. In 1989/91, Si Kahn wrote a song the refrain of which starts with the song's title: "They all sang 'Bread and Roses.

Legacy

Mimi Fariña created the Bread and Roses Benefit Agency in 1974.

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. They have 3 (out of 16) members of the DSA's National Political Committee.

A quarterly journal produced by the UK section of the Industrial Workers of the World ('Wobblies') is called Bread and Roses.

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.

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.

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.

The 2023 documentary Bread and Roses, directed by Afghan filmmaker Sahra Mani and co-produced by Jennifer Lawrence and Malala Yousafzai, is about the women in Afghanistan and the role of the Taliban following the United States' withdrawal from Afghanistan. The film's title is a reference to the slogan.

In 2026, the song was performed by Lucy Dacus in the historic public inauguration of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani at New York City Hall.

Bibliography

Bruce Watson, Bread and Roses: Mills, Migrants, and the Struggle for the American Dream (New York: Viking, 2005), .

References

External links

Bread & Roses: The Strike Led and Won by Women
Performance of the original Kohlsaat version of the melody