BOYCOTT OF MEAT GAINING RECRUITS; Even Restaurants Take Up the Crusade
for the Reduction of Prices.
January 30, 1910, Sunday Page 16, 1332 words
Visible signs that the meat boycott has passed beyond the stage of
mere words have begun to appear in the restaurants of New York. Mrs.
Loebinger of the New York Progressive Woman's Suffrage Union said
yesterday that 5,000 signatures had been obtained to the petition and
pledge that were first circulated at the meeting held by her
organization last Wednesday in Union Square
MEAT BOYCOTT SENDS PRICES STILL LOWER; Packers Maintain High Retail
Market by Refusing to Buy in Drop. NEW SCALE OF WHEAT PRICES. Grain
Cor****ation Establishes Higher Quotations for Lower Grades.
Special to The New York Times.
August 29, 1919, Friday
Page 11, 790 words
CHICAGO, Aug. 28.--Food prices, especially meats, had another big
slump today, with prospects of further wholesale declines and
corresponding declines in retail prices.
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We can't boycott gas stations so that prices can be lowered. However,
just delaying that extra trip to the store or night on the town, done
by enough people, would help. Prices will continue going up until the
oil companies see a drop in driving
May 27, 1935
Activist Clara Shavelson leads butcher shop boycott
On May 27, 1935, New York City women, organized as the City Action
Committee Against the High Cost of Living, picketed butcher shops to
demand a reduction in the price of meat. Convinced that wholesalers
were withholding meat from the market in order to drive up prices,
these wives and mothers determined not to buy meat until the price
fell by ten cents per pound.
Although it echoed the kosher meat boycotts from the early years of
the twentieth century, this boycott, led by veteran organizer Clara
Shavelson, crossed religious and racial lines. It was the result of
rare cooperation between the Communist-led United Council of Working-
Class Women (UCWW) and non-Communist women's groups including
neighborhood mother's clubs, church groups, and black women's groups.
At a spring meeting convened by the UCWW, delegates from all of these
groups had created a national network to address the high cost of
living. Their first action was the New York City meat boycott. Begun
in Brighton Beach and Coney Island, the picket lines had reached
Manhattan by May 27. Five days into the boycott, the Retail Kosher
Meat Trade Code Authority estimated that two-thirds of New York's
kosher meat shops were closed or doing no business as a result of the
women's action. Though kosher butchers were the main target of the
strike, women also picketed non-kosher butchers in Harlem.
By mid-June, the strike had succeeded, as over a thousand shops
reduced meat prices. But success in New York was not the end of the
story. By the end of the summer, women had boycotted meat in Detroit,
Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Denver, Miami, and
elsewhere. Outside of New York, where it had been limited to Jews and
African-Americans, the strike also was taken up by more diverse groups
of women. Significantly, the strike also led to new tactics. For the
first time, housewives' groups traveled to Wa****ngton, D.C., to lobby
federal officials. In July, Shavelson led a group of housewives to
meet with Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace; the women demanded
that he force wholesalers to stop withholding meat from the market.
Although Wallace denied any federal responsibility for the high
prices, blaming a drought instead, a new stage in working-class and
consumer women's activism had been born.
Sources: New York Times, May 28, 1935; May 29, 1935; June 1, 1935;
Annelise Orleck, Common Sense and a Little Fire (Chapel Hill, 1995).
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