Found at: http://www.yclusa.org/article/articleprint/1679/-1/301
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Working Class Heroes: Mother Bloor
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Dynamic Magazine
Back Issues
2005 - March
Mother Bloor committed her entire life to the class struggle, fighting tirelessly for women’s suffrage, workers’ rights, trade unions, peace, international solidarity and socialism. Mother Bloor fought whereever, whenever she was needed.
Ella Reeve Bloor, also known as “Mother Bloor,� was born in Staten Island, New York in 1862 and raised in a working class family with strong ties to an American revolutionary heritage. During the Civil War, her father was a volunteer in the union army and her uncle was a conductor on the Underground Railroad.
She pleaded with her father to allow her to attend college, but he refused. It was uncommon for women to attend college. He also refused to let her seek paid employment.
Bloor began to take action as a women’s suffrage leader. Women in New Jersey were allowed to vote for members of the school b oard but rarely exercised that right. In protest of the male dominated franchise, Bloor and one other woman walked to the polling place on election day and cast their votes amidst howls and laughter.
In the mid-1890’s, Bloor began looking for answers to the most pressing questions of the day - racism, sexism and the class struggle. Her inquiries led to the study of Marxism. It didn’t take long to put her study to practical use as Bloor soon became active in a weavers' “lockout.� Male weavers made $25 a week, while female weavers made $6 a week for the same work. The weavers invited Bloor to join their union, the Textile Workers Union, where she organized for women’s equality and economic justice.
Bloor and her family then moved to New York, where she met Eugene V. Debs, founder of the Social Democratic Party. She wrote a regular column for the “Social-Democrat,� the Party’s publication. By 1902, Bloor and Debs were both members of the Socialist Party U.S.A. As a socialist, Bloor organized in coal mines, silk mills and factories in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Colorado and New York.
In 1905, she helped fellow socialist Upton Sinclair research the filth and exploitation of the Chicago meatpacking industry for his classic muckraking novel The Jungle. One day she received a telegram from Sinclair. President Roosevelt was sending a Congressional investigating committee to Chicago to discredit The Jungle. Sinclair was unable to travel to Chicago and implored Bloor to take his place. In Chicago, Bloor obtained files from the meatpacking industry describing the use of saltpeter and formaldehyde to disguise rotten meat. As the Congressional investigating committee arrived in Chicago, Bloor arranged to have the Chicago Tribune print a front-page story about the meatpackers and succeeded in wrecking the planned cover-up. Her work with Sinc-lair led to the creation of the Food and Drug Administration and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.
In 1914, Mother Bloor was in Ludlow, Colorado, organizing solidarity for the United Mine Workers (UMW) strike against Rockefeller’s Fuel & Iron Co. The state militia was called in. Miners were evicted from their homes. Tent colonies were up all over the state. On April 20, 1914, unionists and their families slept quietly in their tents. In the middle of the night, militia men and Rockefeller thugs crept towards the camp, poured kerosene on the bottom of the tents and applied matches. Flames spread in all directions. As unionists and their families ran from the flames, gun fire rang out. After the flames subsided thirteen children and one pregnant women were dead. This became known as the Ludlow Massacre.
Mother Bloor organized a protest of more than 1,000 people demanding that the Governor of Colorado hold Rockefeller responsible. The Governor refused. Bloor continued to campaign on behalf of the UMW and helped raise funds to erect the UMW memorial dedicated to the fallen unionists and their families.
As World War I and the Russian Revolution neared, the Socialist Party’s right-wing gained control of the organization.
They attempted to scold Bloor, claiming she spent too much time on strikes. “You are not doing enough socialist work,� they told her. She replied that strike work, union work, was socialist work.
In 1919, Bloor, along with the left-wing of the Socialist Party, formed the Communist Party U.S.A. She was 57 years old and eager to build the newly founded Party. She started organizing miners into Party clubs and was sent to the Soviet Union as a delegate to the first Red Trade Union International (RTUI).
Bloor led the American delegation to the Women’s International Congress Against War and Fascism held in Paris, in 1934. In 1938 Bloor published “Women in the Soviet Union,� a first hand account of the revolution’s impact on women’s equality. In 1940, she published her autobiography “We Are Many.� Bloor remained a member of the Communist Party’s Central Committee until 1948.
In 1949, twelve national leaders of the Communist Party were thrown in jail under the infamous Smith Act. Despite her age, Mother Bloor went to Ohio and delivered a roaring speech demanding that the anti-communist witch hunt end. While there, she contracted pneumonia, returning home on a stretcher with a 105 degree fever.
Mother Bloor died on August 10, 1951, at age 89. She had committed her entire life to the class struggle, fighting tirelessly for women’s suffrage, workers’ rights, trade unions, peace, international solidarity and socialism. Mother Bloor fought whereever, whenever she was needed.
Tony Pecinovsky lives and works in St. Louis, MO. He has published in Alternet, WireTap, Z Magazine, the People's Weekly World and Political Affairs among others. He is a member of the YCL National Council and the Newspaper Guild.
