Origins: Buttonmakers Strike

Subject: RE: Origins: Buttonmakers Strike
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Mar 16 - 11:16 PM

And I thought this thread was going to be about melodeons.... :-(

Subject: RE: Origins: Buttonmakers Strike
From: cnd
Date: 12 Mar 16 - 11:01 PM

I found in a book a report of ongoing button-makers strikes in Muscatine, Iowa and Cleveland, Ohio, both of which aren't too far from Nebraska. The book was published in 1910. Would she have been old enough to picket anything then?

Book Source

Subject: RE: Origins: Buttonmakers Strike
From: GUEST,Jesse Bay
Date: 12 Mar 16 - 10:30 PM

Originally from Nebraska, but she was active in Union organizing and Communist Party activities in LA and SF. So maybe it was a little know song from those communities...Or, knowing her, It's entirely possible she made it up herself!

Subject: RE: Origins: Buttonmakers Strike
From: cnd
Date: 12 Mar 16 - 08:33 PM

Where was she from? Maybe then we could find out at least which strike it's about. That could help a little.

Subject: RE: Origins: Buttonmakers Strike
From: Joe Offer
Date: 12 Mar 16 - 05:02 PM

This is intriguing, Jesse, but I can't find anything on the song. Keep watching this thread to see if somebody posts. It will disappear from the Forum menu 24 hours after the most recent post, but you can always bring it back by using the Filter box at the top of the list of threads. Put button in the box and set the age back.

-Joe Offer, Mudcat Music Editor-
[e-mail]

Subject: Origins: Buttonmakers Strike
From: GUEST,Jesse Bay
Date: 12 Mar 16 - 02:57 PM

Hello,

Has anyone heard a folk song called The Buttonmakers' Strike? My grandmother used to sing it all the time, but I can't find a single reference to it on the internet. She sang it to the tune of St. James Infirmary.

Here are the lyrics she sang, missing a verse or two that I can't recall:

Oh the Button Makers strike is now over,
And I sit and sew buttons again.
Soon the whole world will know, the tale my woe,
That I'm bearing a child of shame.

Oh it happened at the last union picnic.
For the strikers admission was free.
In the smoke of the battle, the issues to settle,
I lost my simplicity.

I went just a youthful spirit,
My god what a fool I was!
With Yenkele Hoiker, a radical worker
In the Button union cause.

He spoke of the suffering masses,
And he said that wealth was a sin.
He bought me peanuts, a bag, and a little red flag,
And he kissed me again and again.

And that was the last time I saw him.
He sends me now three for a dime
Some bum postal card that says "best regards,
Am having an organizing time."

So I sit here and I sew on buttons
And tell me now but ain't life tough!
Cause no matter how you sew
And you sew and you sew…
How easy, oy vey, they come off.