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Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. Today is May one, which is International Labor Day,

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Speaker 1: so we thought we would bring out an episode related

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Speaker 1: to labor rights for today's classic. It is the London

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Speaker 1: Match Girls Strike, which originally came out on September. Enjoy

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production

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Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm Tracy Vie Wilson. I'm'm Holly Frying. Today we have

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Speaker 1: a listener request we have gotten a few times before,

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Speaker 1: most recently from Maggie back in April, and that is

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Speaker 1: the London Match Girls Strike. Of This is an event

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Speaker 1: I had heard of. Had you heard of it? Oh? Yes, yes,

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Speaker 1: I knew it was really important to labor rights history

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Speaker 1: in Britain. That was the sum of my knowledge. Mine

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Speaker 1: doesn't go far past that, right. Uh. My knowledge was

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Speaker 1: so limited that I thought these girls who were striking,

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Speaker 1: we're girls who sold matches. That's because of the Sad

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Speaker 1: Christmas song, I would bet well, I I know it

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Speaker 1: more as a as a sad Christmas story with sad illustrations.

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Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, but it's not. Nope, it's not about girls

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Speaker 1: who sold matches and most of them not some of

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Speaker 1: them are women. Some of them are girls, the girls

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Speaker 1: who they made the matches. So that's just to clear

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Speaker 1: up the first misconception. Uh, And this is not quite

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Speaker 1: as jovial a story as maybe the tone of what

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Speaker 1: we just said might make it sound like, Yeah, Uh,

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Speaker 1: it's got some parts in it that are hard, as

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Speaker 1: much of history does, sadly. So we're going to talk

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Speaker 1: first a little bit about life in East London, because

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Speaker 1: even today the name the East End still conjures images

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Speaker 1: of poverty. And writer Charles Dickens died uh a little

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Speaker 1: more than a decade slightly less than two decades before

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Speaker 1: the event that we're talking about today took place, but

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Speaker 1: he was one of the most famous writers to write

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Speaker 1: about the Victorian East End of London. So think about

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Speaker 1: Oliver Twist and you will kind of get where we're

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Speaker 1: going with this. The East End as a term for

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Speaker 1: this neighborhood was actually coined near the end of the

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Speaker 1: seventeen hundreds, but it was really in the eighteen eighties

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Speaker 1: that it started to take on a more insulting connotations,

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Speaker 1: synonymous with poverty, overcrowding, illness, and crime. In eighteen eighty nine,

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Speaker 1: a book called Labor and Life of the people basically

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Speaker 1: surveyed and mapped East and South London, chronicling the incidents

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Speaker 1: of poverty and how people lived in these neighborhoods. And

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Speaker 1: from a review of the book is this quote quote.

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Speaker 1: Much has been written of late about the squalor and

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Speaker 1: vice of East London and of that seemingly vast horde,

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Speaker 1: the army of the unemployed. Most realistic pictures of starving

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Speaker 1: mothers and naked children have filled the newspapers. And that's

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Speaker 1: the end of the quote. So even though the book

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Speaker 1: itself reported that a lot of people living in East

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Speaker 1: and South London had their basic day to day meet

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Speaker 1: needs meant like they had enough to eat as kind

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Speaker 1: of a minimum standard, the area was notorious, even at

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Speaker 1: this time that we're talking about, for being uh synonymous

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Speaker 1: with poverty and crime, and this so called outcast London

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Speaker 1: didn't have its reputation simply because of the income level

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Speaker 1: and living conditions of its residents. Many of the area's

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Speaker 1: residents were immigrants and minorities, regarded with a certain degree

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Speaker 1: of suspicion and disdain by much of middle and upper

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Speaker 1: class Britain. Another culprit for the East ends reputation was

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Speaker 1: the industries that were headquartered there. Many of them were

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Speaker 1: so called sweating industries, so the types of places where

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Speaker 1: people worked long hours in windowless rooms doing work that

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Speaker 1: was sometimes dangerous and often looked down upon by the

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Speaker 1: people in most and the more affluent occupations. One of

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Speaker 1: these employers was Bryant and May Match Company. Most matchmakers

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Speaker 1: at this time were young women, and then the hierarchy

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Speaker 1: of working poor in Victorian England, these so called match

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Speaker 1: girls attended to be some of the lowest of the low.

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Speaker 1: People really looked down on girls who made matches and

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Speaker 1: women who made matches. In eight the Bryant and may

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Speaker 1: Match factories came to the attention of Annie Bessant. Uh.

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Speaker 1: Most American pronunciations of this seem to rime with crescent,

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Speaker 1: so we're going with that. She was a socialist, feminist

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Speaker 1: reformer who by this point had been advocating for social

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Speaker 1: change for decades. In the eighteen seventies, she had edited

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Speaker 1: The National Reformer along with Charles Bradlaw, which advocated for

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Speaker 1: things like labor rights, women's suffrage, and birth control. And

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Speaker 1: that last one got The two of them tried for obscenity,

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Speaker 1: but they were acquitted. Bessant was also a member of

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Speaker 1: the Fabian Society, founded in eighteen eighty four. The Fabian

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Speaker 1: Society is a socialist organization. Establ was to advocate non

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Speaker 1: violent political change, in particular to try to establish a

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Speaker 1: Great Britain as a democratic socialist state. Some of the

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Speaker 1: other famous members in the Fabian Society's early years where

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Speaker 1: George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, and Beatrice and City

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Speaker 1: Web The Famians. The Fabian Society helped form Britain's Labor

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Speaker 1: Party in nineteen o six and has continued to be

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Speaker 1: affiliated with the Labor Party since then. On June fifte

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Speaker 1: the Bryant and may Match Factory was discussed at a

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Speaker 1: Fabian Society meeting following a presentation by trade unionist Clementina Black.

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Speaker 1: The topic of the conversation was the fact that shareholders

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Speaker 1: in the factory received a dividend of more than twenty However,

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Speaker 1: the employees who made its boxes were paid two and

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Speaker 1: a quarter pence or pennies per gross for their work.

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Speaker 1: So to catch folks up really briefly on British money

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Speaker 1: at the time, there were twelve pence in a shilling

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Speaker 1: and twenty shillings in a pound, so this was basically nothing.

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Speaker 1: The members of the society pledged not to use Briant

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Speaker 1: and May matches or to buy any products from them.

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Speaker 1: Bessett wanted to investigate this a little further, so she

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Speaker 1: went to the factory to talk to these workers herself.

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Speaker 1: They weren't, however, actually the same people that had been

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Speaker 1: discussed at the meeting. There's people who were making the

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Speaker 1: two in a quarter pence for every hundred and forty

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Speaker 1: four boxes. Those are people that worked at home, often

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Speaker 1: with their whole families, making boxes as fast as possible.

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Speaker 1: Bessant met workers instead leaving from their shift. These are

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Speaker 1: people who did things in the factory itself, doing jobs

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Speaker 1: like taking the matches off of the frames and putting

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Speaker 1: them into their boxes, and the conditions that these people

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Speaker 1: described to her were pretty appalling. On June she published

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Speaker 1: the findings of her investigation in the Link, a journal

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Speaker 1: for the Servants of Ma'am. Some of Briant and May's

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Speaker 1: match girls were as young as eight years old. Many

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Speaker 1: were immigrants from Ireland whose families had moved to London

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Speaker 1: in the wake of the famine earlier in the century.

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Speaker 1: In the summer they started work at six thirty in

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Speaker 1: the morning and in the winter at eight am, and

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Speaker 1: either way the work day ended at six pm, although

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Speaker 1: in other accounts the days were often as long as

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Speaker 1: fourteen hours. I found a lot of sight of of

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Speaker 1: sources citing the fourteen hour number, which is a little

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Speaker 1: longer than was described in this particular article that sparked

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Speaker 1: this whole thing. Apart from these really long days, all

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Speaker 1: of the work was done standing, and the workers whose

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Speaker 1: job was emptying the frames of their matches also had

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Speaker 1: to run up and down flights of stairs every time

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Speaker 1: they needed a new frame, because they were only allowed

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Speaker 1: one frame at a time in their working stations. So

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Speaker 1: this meant that they had to run up and down

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Speaker 1: the stairs about three times an hour, and they were

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Speaker 1: running because all but a few married women were paid

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Speaker 1: by the piece, not by the day or by the hour,

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Speaker 1: so the more work they did, the more money they

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Speaker 1: got paid. Because the pay for each unit was tiny,

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Speaker 1: for example three quarter pence per gross for filling boxes

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Speaker 1: of matches, they were really motivated to work as quickly

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Speaker 1: as humanly possible because most of Bryant and May's products

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Speaker 1: were strike anywhere matches, which, as their names suggest, can

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Speaker 1: be struck anywhere. This led to problems of your work

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Speaker 1: spontaneously catching fire while you were handling strike anywhere matches

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Speaker 1: as fast as you possibly could. But the employees at

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Speaker 1: the factory didn't get to take home all of their

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Speaker 1: minimal pay. There was this long list of out of

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Speaker 1: pocket costs in which the workers had to pay for

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Speaker 1: the tools that they needed to do their jobs. On

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Speaker 1: top of that, there were fines. These are some of

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Speaker 1: the fines. The workers Besson interviewed reported dirty feet threepence,

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Speaker 1: leaving the area around the bench untidy threepence. I want

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Speaker 1: to clarify that the bench in the situation is like

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Speaker 1: the table or the counter that they're working on. It

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Speaker 1: was not a seat that you sat on. Putting matches

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Speaker 1: that had burned up during work onto the bench. One

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Speaker 1: or two sellings, leaving matches on the bench while going

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Speaker 1: to get a fresh frame threepence, talking threepence being late,

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Speaker 1: the loss of half a day's pay. This was due

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Speaker 1: to not being allowed in to work and a further

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Speaker 1: fine of five pence. Yes, so if you relate, you

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Speaker 1: lost your pay until like the break in the day

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Speaker 1: where they would let you in and then you also

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Speaker 1: had to pay a fine on top of your lost pay.

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Speaker 1: Workers whose matches caught fire while they were working, which

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Speaker 1: happened a lot because these were strike anywhere matches being

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Speaker 1: handled very quickly, they basically watched their pay burn up

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Speaker 1: in front of them because all that work they were

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Speaker 1: doing was now gone, and then if the frames were

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Speaker 1: damaged in the fire, they could be fined or sacked.

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Speaker 1: Bessant also described one girl who had been fined for

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Speaker 1: letting the web that was used to make the matches

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Speaker 1: wrap around a machine. She had done this as her

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Speaker 1: fingers were about to be caught, and she was told, quote,

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Speaker 1: never mind your fingers. Even so, another employee had lost

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Speaker 1: a finger in just such an incident and had been

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Speaker 1: given absolutely no support from the company while she recovered.

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Speaker 1: To add insult to injury and something that could just

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Speaker 1: go into a bad management journal as an example of

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Speaker 1: what not to do. Bessant also reported that Mr Theodore

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Speaker 1: Bryant of Bryant and May had decided to show his

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Speaker 1: respect to Prime Minister William Gladstone by putting up a

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Speaker 1: statue of him at the factory, and he docked a

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Speaker 1: shilling from every worker's pay to pay for the statue

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Speaker 1: that would go in their work area, and then he

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Speaker 1: gave them half a day off without pay as a

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Speaker 1: holiday to celebrate the unveiling of the statue they'd had

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Speaker 1: to pay for themselves. I just want to make grumbling noises,

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Speaker 1: Bessant ends her report quote, such is a bald account

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Speaker 1: of one form of white slavery as it exists in London.

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Speaker 1: With chattel slaves. Mr Bryant could not have made his

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Speaker 1: huge fortune, for he could not have fed, clothed and

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Speaker 1: housed them for four shillings a week each, and they

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Speaker 1: would have had a definite money value which would have

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Speaker 1: served as a protection. But who cares for the fate

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Speaker 1: of these white wage slaves born in slums, driven to

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Speaker 1: work while still children, undersized because under fed, oppressed because helpless,

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Speaker 1: flung aside as soon as worked out? Who cares if

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Speaker 1: they die or go on the streets, provided only that

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Speaker 1: the Brian and May shareholders get their twenty three percent

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Speaker 1: and Mr Theodore Bryant can erect statues and buy parks. Oh,

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Speaker 1: if we had but a people's Dante to make a

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Speaker 1: special circle in the inferno for those who live on

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Speaker 1: this misery and suck wealth out of the starvation of

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Speaker 1: helpless girls. Failing a poet to hold up their conduct

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Speaker 1: to the execration of posterity enshrined in deathless verse, let

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Speaker 1: us strive to touch their consciences i e. Their pockets,

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Speaker 1: and let us at least avoid being partakers of their

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Speaker 1: sins by abstaining from using their commodities. And with that

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Speaker 1: call to action to boycott Bryant and May, we will

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Speaker 1: take a brief Forard to talk about a sponsor to

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Speaker 1: get back to our story. Unsurprisingly, the Briant and maymatch company,

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Speaker 1: which was at this point the largest matchmaker in Britain,

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Speaker 1: was not happy at all by Annie Besson's report in

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Speaker 1: the link. They immediately started trying to strong arm their

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Speaker 1: employees into denying that the allegations were true. On July four,

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Speaker 1: an anonymous worker wrote a letter to Annie Bessent that said,

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Speaker 1: in part quote, they have been trying to get all

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Speaker 1: the poor girls to say that it is all lies

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Speaker 1: that has been printed, and trying to make us sign

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Speaker 1: papers that it is all lies. On July about two

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Speaker 1: workers walked off the job. Soon about twelve hundred of

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Speaker 1: the Bryant and May employees who made strike anywhere matches

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Speaker 1: had gone on strike, and another three hundred who worked

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Speaker 1: in the nearby wax match factory joined them. Accounts at

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Speaker 1: the time were all over the place about exactly why

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Speaker 1: they had stopped their work on that particular day. According

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Speaker 1: to one account, they were just tired of all the

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Speaker 1: fines and poor working conditions, And another two women had

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Speaker 1: been fired for talking to Annie Besset about her investigation,

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Speaker 1: and in a third it was one young woman who

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Speaker 1: had been fired for not following a foreman's orders to

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Speaker 1: fill a match box in a particular way, but her

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Speaker 1: friends at the factory had thought her firing was unfair,

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Speaker 1: and it was this last explanation that Brian and May

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Speaker 1: tried to claim when talking to the press. And for

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Speaker 1: decades this strike was positioned mostly as Annie Besset's work,

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Speaker 1: but she wasn't particularly involved in it. In Victorian England,

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Speaker 1: strikes did not have a good track record of leading

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Speaker 1: to reforms for workers, so Besset thought the best course

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Speaker 1: of action would be to press consumers to boycott Bryant

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Speaker 1: in May, which they did. Most of her involvement with

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Speaker 1: the strike itself was through raising funds and spreading the

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Speaker 1: word Donors included Frederick Ingalls and George Bernard Shaw became

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Speaker 1: a clerk for the fundraising effort. The striking workers themselves

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Speaker 1: were really the ones who actually organized the strike and

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Speaker 1: the protests that went along with it. They ultimately formed

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Speaker 1: the Union of Women Matchmakers, which was the largest union

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Speaker 1: of women and girls in Britain. They formed a picket line,

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Speaker 1: They arranged demonstrations and meetings with speakers at mile End Waste,

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Speaker 1: which was a nearby open area and mile End Waste

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Speaker 1: also served as the meeting point to distribute donations to

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Speaker 1: the people who needed them. About fifty workers went directly

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Speaker 1: to Parliament to discuss their grievances directly in person with

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Speaker 1: the MPs. Overall, the striking workers really got a lot

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Speaker 1: of support. One reason was that Annie Bessett was quite

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Speaker 1: good at the publicity side of it. She had titled

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Speaker 1: her original article on their working conditions White Slavery in

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Speaker 1: London and had closely tied the idea of these women's

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Speaker 1: terrible pay and poor working conditions to the idea of

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Speaker 1: chattel slavery. Britain had abolished slavery more than fifty years prior,

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Speaker 1: so the idea that there was slavery going on right

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Speaker 1: there in the East End really horrified a lot of

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Speaker 1: Victorian London, even though to be clear, what was happening

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Speaker 1: at the Match Factory was definitely not chattel slavery. That

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Speaker 1: was just a comparison that she had very articulately drawn. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's and I wanted to point that out because they're

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Speaker 1: definitely cases where people continue to use slavery as like

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Speaker 1: a one to one direct parallel with things that were

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Speaker 1: not slavery. So this was terrible. It was not chattel slavery.

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Speaker 1: The striking women also got the support of some of

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Speaker 1: London's skilled trade unions, including the London Trades Council. The

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Speaker 1: LTC had traditionally shunned the needs of unskilled labor. They

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Speaker 1: represented skilled workers and so pretty much all of the

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Speaker 1: unskilled labor in Britain. They're pretty much on their own,

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Speaker 1: but in this case it stepped in and tried to

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Speaker 1: negotiate with Brian and may On behalf of the striking workers. Initially,

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Speaker 1: the factory refused to budge, saying only that if the

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Speaker 1: women returned to work, all but the ringleaders could have

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Speaker 1: their jobs back. But the support was definitely not Universal.

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Speaker 1: There is a widely quoted piece from the Times quote

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Speaker 1: the pity is that the match girls have not been

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Speaker 1: suffered to take their own course, but have been egged

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Speaker 1: on to strike by irresponsible advisors. No effort has been

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Speaker 1: spared by those pests of the modern industrialized world to

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Speaker 1: bring this quarrel to a head. I tried really hard

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Speaker 1: to figure out exactly, like this quote comes up again

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Speaker 1: and again and stuff about the about the strike, and

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Speaker 1: I'm like, Okay, what is the context of this piece

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Speaker 1: and the Times? This is a quote that somebody said

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Speaker 1: that the Times printed, or was like in an editorial

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Speaker 1: in the Times, Like what actually, uh what what was it?

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Speaker 1: But I did not find the answer to that. Soon,

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Speaker 1: Social Settlement organization Toynbee Hall was investigating, and boycott was

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Speaker 1: rolling through the consumer market, and bad press was putting

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Speaker 1: an extreme amount of pressure on Bryant and May. So

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Speaker 1: after about two weeks the company started negotiating with the strikers.

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Speaker 1: That negotiations started on July six, and an agreement was

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Speaker 1: reached the next day, Bryant and May insisting to the

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Speaker 1: press that they surely would have addressed any complaints if

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Speaker 1: only they had known that anyone was unhappy about anything,

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Speaker 1: rehired all of the striking workers. I feel like that's

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Speaker 1: like a model that has happened so many times throughout

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Speaker 1: history when companies are like, we didn't know anybody was

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Speaker 1: miserable in their incredibly cruel jobs. People love that there

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Speaker 1: that nobody said anything. It was a problem that nobody

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Speaker 1: said it was a problem that we were docking them

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Speaker 1: threepence for dirty feet and not paying them any thing,

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Speaker 1: and like making them run up and downstairs with strike

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Speaker 1: anywhere matches. They were unhappy. As a result of the negotiations,

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Speaker 1: all of the fines were abolished, as well as all

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Speaker 1: deductions from the workers pay for the tools they needed

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Speaker 1: to do their job. There were also pay adjustments and

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Speaker 1: a policy was instituted in which grievances could be taken

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Speaker 1: to the managing director rather than having to go through

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Speaker 1: the foreman, and the union had to stay to advocate

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Speaker 1: for the workers. One last concession that the strikers got

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Speaker 1: was the establishment of a breakfast room, and the breakfast

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Speaker 1: dream was enormously important for reasons that we will talk

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Speaker 1: about after another brief sponsor break. So one of the

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Speaker 1: things that we haven't really talked about in terms of

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Speaker 1: the Bryant and May workers workplace hazards was risks to

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Speaker 1: their health. In addition to all the things Bessent docum

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Speaker 1: minted in her report, women working in match stick factories

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Speaker 1: were susceptible to a condition known as fossey jaw, sometimes

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Speaker 1: described at the time as phosphorus poisoning, and this was

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Speaker 1: because the strike Anywhere matches that they were making used

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Speaker 1: white phosphorus sometimes also called yellow phosphorus, and exposure to

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Speaker 1: white phosphorus can cause osteo necrosis, which is the death

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Speaker 1: of bone tissue. Here are the symptoms of fossy jaw, swelling,

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Speaker 1: tooth pain, swollen gums, swollen cheeks and jaws, tooth decay,

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Speaker 1: decay of the jawbones, festering sores that it's exposed, the

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Speaker 1: decaying bone, necrotic gangreeness tissue in the face and jaw,

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Speaker 1: and death. Up to of the time, Bryant and May

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Speaker 1: were in fact using half of all the yellow phosphorus

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Speaker 1: in the entire matchmaking industry, and this was a departure

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Speaker 1: from its original business plan, which was to use red phosphorus,

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Speaker 1: which does not cause osteo necrosis, to make those strike

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Speaker 1: on the box matches. These were more expensive, which made

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Speaker 1: strike anywhere matches much more popular. Often, workers who found

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Speaker 1: themselves displaying the early symptoms of this condition would try

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Speaker 1: to hide it because they knew that the factory, trying

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Speaker 1: to protect its own interests, would fire them if it

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Speaker 1: found out that they were sick. One of the reasons

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Speaker 1: that a separate space for food and eating was so

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Speaker 1: important to the strike negotiations was that without one, Bryant

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Speaker 1: and May workers had to bring their meals with them,

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Speaker 1: keep them next to their work area, and then sometimes

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Speaker 1: eat at their work benches. Eating in the working area

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Speaker 1: with the food having also been stored there in the

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Speaker 1: working area, increase their phosphorus exposure dramatically. Another thing we

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Speaker 1: haven't talked about it's a total surprise to me to learn,

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Speaker 1: is that William Bryant and Francis May, founders of Bryant

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Speaker 1: and May Match Company h were Quakers and based on

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Speaker 1: literally any other time we have ever talked about Quakers

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Speaker 1: in the podcast, ever, this might come as a surprise

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Speaker 1: to people. They had founded the business in eighteen fifty

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Speaker 1: and in eighteen sixty three, the Commission on the Employment

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Speaker 1: of Children in Industry investigated their business and found it

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Speaker 1: to be quote a very nicely conducted place. In eighteen

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Speaker 1: sixty one, though Wilberforce Bryant, William Bryant's oldest son, became

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Speaker 1: the general manager there. He wanted to expand the business

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Speaker 1: as much as possible over the objections of Francis May,

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Speaker 1: the younger Bryant forced May out in eighteen seventy five,

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Speaker 1: following the threat of a lawsuit that May was afraid

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Speaker 1: would tarnish the reputation of the Quaker religion. Obviously, May's

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Speaker 1: quiet departure from the company did not have the effect

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Speaker 1: he was hoping for at all, because without his more

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Speaker 1: tempering influence, the sons of William Bryant took the business

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Speaker 1: in a very different and a much more exploitive direction.

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Speaker 1: A lot of the pay and working conditions that the

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Speaker 1: striking workers were advocating to change had actually been illegal

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Speaker 1: for years following the passage of the Factory Acts in Britain.

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Speaker 1: For a couple of years after the strike, Bryant and

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Speaker 1: May tried to restore its reputation as being a socially

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Speaker 1: minded employer, as was expected of a Quaker business. It

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Speaker 1: took a more fair but perhaps somewhat paternal approach to

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Speaker 1: its workers. It also made charitable contributions to organizations that

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Speaker 1: would benefit the people who worked there, who continued to

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Speaker 1: be quite poor. Soon the press were describing Briant and

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Speaker 1: May as a model employer, offering jobs to British workers

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Speaker 1: and looking after the poor ladies who worked there. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: they're doing things like donating lots of food to the

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Speaker 1: soup kitchens where the people who worked for them eight

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Speaker 1: from time to time because they weren't being paid enough

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Speaker 1: to buy food elsewhere. Uh. It's a little unclear whether

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Speaker 1: whether the Bryant's sons continue to identify as Quakers or not.

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00:23:02,320 --> 00:23:08,760
Speaker 1: I found contradictory uh evidence on that. But regardless, this

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Speaker 1: more philanthropic but sometimes definitely paternalistic way of running their

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Speaker 1: business did not last. The Star reported a case of

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Speaker 1: fossy jaw at the factory in eighteen nine two. A

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Speaker 1: subsequent investigation found numerous safety issues with how phosphorus was

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Speaker 1: being handled there, and then ten years after the strike,

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Speaker 1: Brian and May appeared in the in court following the

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Speaker 1: death of one of their workers from phosphorus poisoning, and

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Speaker 1: it was revealed that the factory had seventeen unreported cases

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Speaker 1: of phosphorus poisoning, which by law had to be reported

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Speaker 1: to health authorities whenever they occurred. Bryant and May had

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Speaker 1: not only failed to report these cases, but had also

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Speaker 1: actively concealed the fact that they had even happened and

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Speaker 1: six people had died. They were fined twenty five pounds

400
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Speaker 1: nine shillings. I laugh out of sadness, because that does

401
00:24:03,600 --> 00:24:05,640
Speaker 1: not sound like a lot of mona, even in late

402
00:24:05,720 --> 00:24:10,199
Speaker 1: nineteenth century dollars. The company ultimately had to merge with

403
00:24:10,320 --> 00:24:14,639
Speaker 1: other matchmakers to stay afloat because their reputation could not

404
00:24:15,240 --> 00:24:19,399
Speaker 1: really recover, and this strike of eight eight led to

405
00:24:19,520 --> 00:24:23,119
Speaker 1: increased awareness of the dangers of working with yellow phosphorus

406
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Speaker 1: and a push to ban its use. In one the

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Speaker 1: Salvation Army opened a competing match factory using only red

408
00:24:30,200 --> 00:24:34,440
Speaker 1: phosphorus and paid double what Briant and May did. Briant

409
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Speaker 1: and May stopped using yellow phosphorus in nineteen o one.

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Speaker 1: The International Association of Labor Legislation began advocating a global

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Speaker 1: ban on yellow phosphorus and matchmaking in the early nineteen

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Speaker 1: hundreds as well. An international agreement was signed in nineteen

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Speaker 1: o eight and Britain banned the import, sale, or manufacturer

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Speaker 1: of white phosphorus matches in nineteen ten. It's the strike

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00:25:01,080 --> 00:25:05,239
Speaker 1: anywhere matches seem incredibly dangerous to me. Yeah, and so

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Speaker 1: it's like it surprised me as I was reading this

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Speaker 1: that like the people favored the cheapness of the strike

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Speaker 1: anywhere matches over the safety of a match that does

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Speaker 1: not just light on fire against anything with the most

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00:25:19,119 --> 00:25:24,080
Speaker 1: minor friction, right, yeah. Uh. And this strike also had

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Speaker 1: a huge influence on organized labor in Britain. Following the

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Speaker 1: success of the match workers strike, there was a move

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Speaker 1: toward unionizing among other unskilled labor all across the nation.

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Speaker 1: It grew into the new Unionism movement, and as we

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Speaker 1: alluded to earlier, it eventually led to the establishment of

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Speaker 1: the Independent Labor Party. Yeah. Prior to this, as we

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00:25:45,119 --> 00:25:48,960
Speaker 1: said earlier, like not, strikes hadn't traditionally been very successful

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Speaker 1: in getting workers uh changes in their working environment and

429
00:25:54,359 --> 00:25:56,439
Speaker 1: the time right around this and this, the success of

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00:25:56,480 --> 00:26:00,520
Speaker 1: this strike shifted that a little bit um and the

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00:26:00,520 --> 00:26:06,399
Speaker 1: the idea of unskilled labor having a union became a

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00:26:06,480 --> 00:26:09,480
Speaker 1: much bigger deal because before that, most of the unions

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Speaker 1: were about more skilled trades. Uh. And Uh, the people

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Speaker 1: who were working in unskilled jobs a lot of times

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Speaker 1: with basically no protections, uh, weren't really seen as being

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Speaker 1: worthy of being in a union. And that changed after

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Speaker 1: this point. Yeah, is your listener male peppy this time around?

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Speaker 1: It's pretty peppy. Yeah. Anny Bessett was also a really

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Speaker 1: interesting person, and she went on to do other things

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Speaker 1: completely unrelated to this strike. And originally, as I started

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Speaker 1: researching this article or this podcast, was going to be

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Speaker 1: a lot more about her, and then I realized that

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00:26:48,400 --> 00:26:50,960
Speaker 1: it's really a big misperception that the strike was all

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Speaker 1: her doing. Um. A lot of the writing about the

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00:26:54,800 --> 00:27:00,600
Speaker 1: strike for decades was pretty dismissive and judgmental about women

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00:27:00,680 --> 00:27:02,639
Speaker 1: who were striking and sort of made it like they

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Speaker 1: were unruly children who were goaded into a successful strike

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Speaker 1: by the heroic work of Annie Besson And that was

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Speaker 1: not true at all. No, they were on it. They organized,

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00:27:15,359 --> 00:27:18,040
Speaker 1: they really they had a whole lot of solidarity, and

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00:27:18,080 --> 00:27:20,359
Speaker 1: they organized a bunch of stuff and they got things

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Speaker 1: that they were after heay so much for joining us

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Speaker 1: on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of the archive,

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Speaker 1: if you heard an email address or a Facebook, U

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00:27:33,480 --> 00:27:35,439
Speaker 1: r L or something similar over the course of the

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00:27:35,440 --> 00:27:39,480
Speaker 1: show that could be obsolete now. Our current email address

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00:27:39,680 --> 00:27:44,040
Speaker 1: is History Podcast at i heart radio dot com. Our

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00:27:44,119 --> 00:27:47,520
Speaker 1: old health stuff works email address no longer works, and

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00:27:47,560 --> 00:27:50,119
Speaker 1: you can find us all over social media at missed

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00:27:50,160 --> 00:27:53,119
Speaker 1: in History. And you can subscribe to our show on

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Speaker 1: Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, the I heart Radio app, and

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Speaker 1: wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuff you Missed in

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00:28:02,920 --> 00:28:05,639
Speaker 1: History Class is a production of I heart Radio. For

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00:28:05,720 --> 00:28:09,000
Speaker 1: more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,

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Speaker 1: Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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Speaker 1: H