Bread and Roses

[2] 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 slogan pairing bread and roses, appealing for both fair wages and dignified conditions, found resonance as transcending "the sometimes tedious struggles for marginal economic advances" in the "light of labor struggles as based on striving for dignity and respect", as Robert J. S. Ross wrote in 2013.

[5] 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.

Not at once; but woman is the mothering element in the world and her vote will go toward helping forward the time when life's Bread, which is home, shelter and security, and the Roses of life, music, education, nature and books, shall be the heritage of every child that is born in the country, in the government of which she has a voice.Helen Todd became involved in the fall of 1910 with the Chicago garment workers' strike, which was led by the Women's Trade Union League of Chicago.

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!'".

[22] The Lawrence textile strike, which lasted from January to March 1912, united dozens of immigrant communities under the leadership of the Industrial Workers of the World, and was led to a large extent by women.

The Women's Trade Union League of Boston also became partially involved in the strike, and set up a relief station, which provided food.

One critic of the AFL's failure to endorse the strike stated: "To me, many of the people in the AFL seem to be selfish, reactionary and remote from the struggle for bread and liberty of the unskilled workers..."[23] Although popular telling of the strike includes signs being carried by women reading "We want bread, but we want roses, too!

[24][25][4][26] In May 1912, Merle Bosworth gave a speech in Plymouth, Indiana, on women suffrage in which she repeated the discussion of taxation without representation and the meaning of the phrase "Bread and Roses" that Helen Todd and her companions gave in 1910 during their automobile campaign for the women's suffrage.

Help, you women of privilege, give her the ballot to fight with.Schneiderman, subsequently, gave a number of speeches in which she repeated her quote about the worker desiring 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.

[31] However, there is a quote by the Roman physician and philosopher Galen of Pergamon which closely parallels the sentiment and wording of the phrase.

"[33][34] 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.

[45] The use of the song at Bryn Mawr College evolved out of the school's first-of-its-kind summer labor education program.

This version has been recorded by various artists, including Judy Collins, Ani DiFranco, Utah Phillips, and Josh Lucker, and was performed by a slowly-growing crowd of workers in a moving/critical turning point scene in the 2014 movie Pride.

[47] Composer Christian Wolff wrote a piano piece entitled "Bread and Roses" (1976) based on the strike song.

[49] The poem has been translated into Russian by Russian poet Kirill Felixovich Medvedev, set to the original Kohlsaat music, and performed by the Moscow-based political activist punk collective Arkadiy Kots (Аркадий Коц), appearing on their 2016 album Music for the working class.

[53][54][55] A quarterly journal produced by the UK section of the Industrial Workers of the World ('Wobblies') is called Bread and Roses.

[56] The 2014 film Pride depicts the members of a Welsh mining community singing "Bread and Roses" at a National Union of Mineworkers lodge during the UK miners' strike (1984–1985).