What’s “Bread and Roses”?
It’s a phrase associated with the struggle for women’s rights to vote in the United States, a campaign that lasted from the 1840s through 1918. The cause was called “women’s suffrage,” and women activists were call “suffragists.” Women got the right to vote in several U.S. states long before women were given the right to vote nationally in 1920 by an amendment to the constitution. Wyoming was the first state to do so, in 1869.
The phrase is traced to a speech given in 1910 by Helen Todd (1870-1952), a women’s vote activist. She argued for “bread for all and roses, too.” The phrase was picked up by a poet who published a poem about it in 1911. It came to be associated with a strike by women working in the Lowell, Massachusetts textile industry strike in early 1912. Even then, a lot of American women were in the labor force, and in Lowell, they were a docile, poorly paid work force, with long hours in poor conditions. They went on strike for the 54 hour week. Double pay for overtime and a raise. The strike attracted immense publicity.
The phrase “Bread and roses” resonated with the strikersand it has become known in the history books as “The bread and roses strike.”
But it’s not just history of a cool phrase. What does it mean and why should anyone care? One sentence in a story about the strike had the sentences, “What the woman who labors wants is the right to live, not simply exist.” A 1911 poem contains the line “Hearts starve as well as the body.”
Starving hearts?
Yes. Basic subsistence keeps you alive. But just staying alive is just staying alive. That’s the description of the life cycle of a virus, not a human being.
People need more. Hearts are hungry for dignity. Hearts are hungry for respect. Hearts are hungry for love. Those are concepts, of course, but they are still beautiful.
For many people, yesterday and today, life is grim, ugly and full of sorrow and sadness. People starve. People endure torture. People endure tyranny. People endure pain and loss. People just endure.
People need bread. Roses seem like a luxury. You can’t eat roses when you are hungry. A spot of bright sun on the wall of a room where you are crying and sad, coming in through a window doesn’t heal the hurt. A smile from a stranger on the street doesn’t bring you love.
But roses bring beauty and that’s something that can brighten up a drab day. That beam of sunlight in your time of darkness is a signal that life goes on and you’ll get through it. That smile on the street is an antidote to the featureless life that cities sometimes impose. The heart is hungry for light and smiles and beauty.
Imagine you go shopping. Money’s tight. You need food for the week ahead and need to stock up on things. But you see a dress that you can’t really afford, but that will make you look really good and on impulse, you buy it. You want to be pretty for your lover (or handsome for your lover). Is that a silly thing to do, skimp on food because looking good makes you feel good about yourself? You have a heart to feed, too.
Bread and roses.
Deep knowledge,everyday.
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