 Immigrant Girl, Radical Woman is a collaboration over space and time between my grandmother and me, her granddaughter. Matilda Rabinowitz was also known as Matilda Robbins. My first name is derived from her anglicized name, her anglicized surname. We found her memoir after her death, and I've always wanted to make it better known. When my mother looked at the material, she decided that it should go to a repository that would take good care of it. So she sent all of my grandmother's papers, and she was a prolific writer, to Wayne State University, to the Walter Ruther labor archives there. And that's where the memoir has sat for many, many years. I always wanted to do something with this material because Matilda was really an extraordinary woman, and especially I think her principles were incredibly influential in my life. But it was hard for me to figure out how to present this work until it occurred to me that perhaps I could illustrate her story. And I don't know why it took me so long to figure that out, but I have actually been thinking about this material for about 20 years at least. So let's go. My grandmother was born Tobah Gietel Rabinowitz. She arrived in the U.S. from Russia with her mother and four siblings on Christmas Day in 1900, shortly before her 14th birthday. Her family had lived in the pail of settlement for generations. She was educated in a czarist public school, the first generation of girls in her family to be educated. In her memoir, Matilda mentions an anti-Semitic teacher of Church Slavonic that all students were required to pass. When she was seven, her father left for the United States. Five years later, the rest of the family followed him. The ship they traveled on, the state of Nebraska out of Glasgow, was crowded and unsanitary, the food nearly inedible. Of the 1,200 passengers, 800 traveled steerage. I don't know that everybody knows what steerage is, but it's worse than fourth class. It's in the hold of the ship with no air, no little sanitary facilities, and very, very, very crowded. The crossing took weeks, and the weather in late November and most of December was ferocious. The ship nearly capsized in a mid-Atlantic storm and was decommissioned the following year. Matilda, her mother, and four siblings arrived at Ellis Island on December 25, 1900. My grandmother writes of her deep disappointment in the life that greeted her on the lower east side of New York City, the crowds, the filth, and the rude manners of her neighbors. She and her mother worked long hours doing piecework in the kitchen of their tenement apartment. Soon, she found work outside the home in various sweatshops of the needle trades. When the family moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut in 1903, Matilda found work running a machine that showed stays into corsets at the Bachelor Brothers corset factory. She earned $12 for a six-day, 55-hour week. A step up from her first job, clipping threads off, finished garments in a shirt-waste factory at $2.50 a week. She was the only Jew among mostly Anglo-Irish and Scottish women workers. She tried to interest them in organizing, but didn't find people very interested in it at all. Before she was 20, she was regularly attending socialist lectures and theatrical performances. By 1909, she had joined the Socialist Party and was a member of the IWW. Her father became a machinist at the Yale and Town Lott Company in Stanford. And then at this factory in Bridgeport, this is the Locomobile Automobile Factory, all the cars were made by hand here at first. They were very sought-after cars and they were quite expensive. Our family certainly could never have afforded one. By 1911, she had also embarked on a fraught romantic relationship with my grandfather Ben Legere, a fellow wobbly who was married with two children. In her early 20s, finding lodging in the headquarters of the Women's Trade Union League, she worked in a garment factory in Boston. When she was laid off, she was offered a position as an assistant on the newly formed Minimum Wage Commission, conducting interviews in candy factories, department stores and laundries for a survey of conditions among workers in Massachusetts and Connecticut. This was her first white-collar job. Although Matilda's education ended at the eighth grade, her knowledge of Yiddish, Russian, Polish, Ukrainian and Slovak was useful in conducting interviews with the workers and she quickly learned the basics of recording statistics. My grandmother left such a detailed account of the strike in Little Falls, New York. It surprises me that she never mentions a brave figure who is absent from her account of her first strike in Little Falls. From members of the Little Falls Historical Society, I first learned of Helen Schloss. Her absence from Matilda's account is an unfortunate lacuna. While she names my grandfather, Filippo Bocchini, Fred Moore, who years later may have been her lover for a while, she also talks about Philip Russell and Vincent St. John, Bill Haywood and others who participated. No women are described in her account, although it's known that women were the backbone of the strike and my grandmother was an outspoken feminist. This is Matilda's story and as I read it, I will use my long neglected training as an actor and attempting to summon her voice. It was a voice I heard for many years as she narrated stories she made up or engaged us in sometimes heated discussions of politics and current events. The Lawrence strike produced a great impetus in the organization of textile workers throughout the Northeast and elsewhere. Among the numerous mill towns where strikes were breaking out was Little Falls, New York. In early November 1912, 1,600 mill workers struck there. Organizers and speakers were greatly needed and Ben and an Italian speaking organizer, Filippo Bocchini, were sent. Ten days after they arrived, a typical flare-up took place on a picket line and 14, including Ben and Bocchini, were arrested and jailed. The Bridgeport papers carried a prominent notice of Ben's arrest. We were both members of the IWW in charge of the strike. I wired the IWW in Chicago for confirmation and that same day came a telegram from Secretary Vincent St. John, go to Little Falls at once, name national organization as authority. A new and unpredictable road lay ahead. Early the next day, I called my tutor, packed my grip, and to the dismay of my parents left for Little Falls, I had never been in a strike. My short and unsuccessful effort to interest corset workers in a union was hardly even a beginning in the art of labor organization. To be sure, I knew both firsthand and in the context with scores of women workers interviewed in the surveys in Massachusetts and Connecticut what the conditions were and how justified any strike would be. I had also read socialist and labor literature and formed ideas. But to be cast suddenly into the role of responsibility for a strike was rather frightening. During all day, I took a train from Bridgeport to New York City, then changed to the New York Central Railroad bound for Albany. From there, I took a branch line to Little Falls. It was dark as the three-car train finally puffed into the dimly-lit station at Little Falls. As the train was slowly pulling in and the few passengers to embark were gathering their things, I became aware of two busy-looking men going through the car I was in. And peering about and into the faces of the passengers, they hopped off as the train stopped and stood hard by the steps sharply watching the descending passengers. Having read and heard descriptions of reception committees where labor organizers were met at trains and prevented from stopping, I guessed who these men were looking for. They had hardly a glance for me. Since it was Thanksgiving Eve, I imagined they dismissed me as a youngster coming home for the holiday. Fearing to draw attention to myself, I walked off the platform without asking for directions to the headquarters of the strike, Sokol Hall. I followed some people along the more lighted streets hoping they would lead to a street car, but there were no street cars in Little Falls in 1912. Once or twice I heard Slovenians spoken. The speakers were headed toward a row of lights that suggested a bridge. I let one or two pass, then hearing another speak Slovenian. I asked him for directions to Sokol Hall. He said he was going to a meeting there, so I introduced myself. It was about nine o'clock. The meeting had been going on for two or three hours. The strikers' checks, polls, and Italians were listening to a report on the day's strike activities. There was a little flurry of excitement as the young striker motioned to the speaker. He interrupted his report, introduced me, and the warm greeting of the strikers brought tears to my eyes. To hide my discomfort, I told them of the two dicks and how they ignored me. That made them laugh and helped me to regain my composure. So my tough 14-week task in Little Falls began. I sat with the strike committee after the general meeting adjourned and was informed of events from the beginning. Conditions were as bad as they had been at Lawrence, a 55-hour week miserable pay, the speed up, abuses of various kinds. The procedure in IWW strikes in those days was pretty much the same. Organization was new and there was never a treasury. The strike was a spontaneous walkout, as at Lawrence. A number of bright young men and women on the strike committee had managed to hold the strike together. Picketing had continued even after the attack by the police and the arrest of the leaders. But after two weeks, the strikers had exhausted what tiny reserves they had. They were helping each other as best they could, but a common commissary in kitchen was urgently needed. We had to find money for it and volunteers to manage it. Legal aid was also needed for those in jail. And we had to immediately organize publicity and send out appeals for help. Offered an attic room in the house of a striker. I rose early, shivering in the unheated room, washed if the water had not frozen, and along with the strikers made the picket line at 6 a.m. I found the daily picket line and the bitter cold, a test of endurance, and marveled at the courage of the poorly clad strikers who kept their spirits up with humor and song in the wobbly tradition. Weeping through the snow, our breath steaming, we circled the mills and circled the mills. And often sang, Italian blended well with the Polish and Slavic revolutionary labor songs. There was hope and courage in them. Soon IWW attorney Fred Moore arrived to handle the legal issues. Twelve of the fourteen arrested were released after a few days in jail, but Ben and Bokini were charged with inciting to riot and held without bail. Phillips Russell, a well-known labor journalist, arrived to do turnout publicity. To feed the strikers we dispatched appeals for funds to unions, socialist party locals, and sympathetic individuals. For me, the days and nights were crowded with work. The picket line at 6 in the morning, coffee, bread, and perhaps some stewed fruit after that at the commissary. The daily meeting with the strike committee in the forenoon with a report on the response to appeals, funds, developments. The commissary was set up for distribution of groceries to families while single persons were fed in its hall. Although it was the women strikers who toiled in the kitchen, both men and women worked in the adjoining shop to clean and repair the arriving donations of clothing. Two Italian cobblers did wonders with worn shoes. It was a busy little world, struggling to survive. And yet, what an example it was that men and women of different backgrounds and speaking different languages could strive together against great odds in unbroken solidarity for three months, determined to rest a little more life for themselves and their children. A general meeting was held for all strikers every night at Sokol Hall and once a week a social get-together with a fiddle or a harmonium for dancing and singing. The winter was severe. The Mohawk Valley was beautiful white and sparkling with snow, long icicles hung from the trees and the sound of sleigh bells tinkled merrily in the crisp air. But oh, how cold it was. And what of Ben languishing in jail all the week as the weeks dragged into months? Twice a week I made the trip to Herkimer to visit the two prisoners in the county jail there. I spent most of my time with Ben, but both he and Bochini were very agitated during my visits and, of course, they were miserably unhappy. Their arrest had come too quickly. Too suddenly they complained. They had hardly gotten into the strike when they were picked off. It was their first, too. Bochini, emotional, had little theory or practice in the organization and was filled with romantic ideas about anarchism. But he was, nevertheless, more amiable, more appreciative of this task, the strike demanded of me, more considerate of my load. Then suddenly Big Bill Haywood was among us. His arrival caused quite a sensation among the strikers. But I remember him sitting in an old office chair rather too small for his big slack body, his arms hanging limp over the arms of the chair, his good eye a bit cocked, smoking one cigarette after another. To me, he seemed to lack repose, concentration, patience. Criticism upset him and he defended even his small mistakes heatedly. During his week with us in Little Falls, he walked in the picket line two or three times, his figure looming large, his head with its large hat above the men and women who followed. Since I am under five feet tall and he was over six feet, we were sometimes referred to as the long and the short of the strike. His arrival at Little Falls created a stir just as the Dicks paid no attention to me when I arrived at the railroad station. So were they and the town policemen lined up on the platform on the alert as he stepped off the train. And after that, for the ten days that he stayed with us, he was shadowed. His fame at this time was perhaps at its apogee. Being young in the organization and a bit romantic, I probably indulged in unrealistic ideas of what revolutionary labor leaders should be. Debs influenced me and the simple stern devotion of St. John and especially those who had come to Little Falls to give of themselves their small means expecting no reward. But the men and women activists and sympathizers from near and far who came to Little Falls served and remained unknown were to me the true heroes of that far off day. Here a minister who left churchianity for Christianity and managed our commissary, a writer who volunteered to do our publicity, a sociologist who drew our posters and took care of our printing, those and others mixed and worked and suffered with the mill workers. They came unbidden and they left unknown and across the years and with a rare nostalgia I remember them. The strike dragged on. After the first arrests there were continuous intimidations of the pickets. The police invaded Sokol Hall and made a shambles of it but none broke ranks and when the strike was settled in February even though the gains were small the 1600 mill workers were proud in their solidarity. The 14 weeks I spent in Little Falls were perhaps the most memorable of my entire career as a labor organizer. First it was the most intense training period one could undergo. It was my first big challenge then because the strike was concentrated in a small town we who came to help lived close to the strikers spoke and worked only with them and for them. Some were more involved some less but I soon learned to distinguish sincerity from show capability from bluster. Ben's trial was soon to begin. So when I left Little Falls in February the IWW headquarters approved a tour for me for the purpose of raising funds for the Legere Bokini defense. Ben and I parted abruptly following the last of many tempestuous and agonizing visits in the Herkimer jail. He played the martyr role and I left him in a flood of bitter discontent and suspicion. My fellow workers even on short acquaintance in Little Falls seemed to have little respect for his ability or integrity. I went through much torment and disappointment but my vision of him was not so clear then as it would later become and I still condoned much. I was determined to make the separation complete and though I would do everything possible for the defense I would sever all intimate contact. I was determined that our romance was finished. Was I still in love with him? It was a question I could not answer. Following Little Falls Matilda went on to organize Stoge makers and pottery workers in Ohio, steel workers in Pittsburgh, auto workers in Detroit where she was arrested. Her last job for the IWW was among cotton mill workers in Greenville, South Carolina for 21 weeks. She said it was the toughest job I ever had. Two years after her long battle in Greenville she bore a daughter, my mother Vita. Matilda wanted a child but not a husband and was able to spend the summer of 1919 with her baby in Nantucket staying in a cottage owned by rich socialist friends borrowing money while what she had saved was gone. She found clerical work to support herself and her daughter but when summer came Matilda usually had managed to save enough to spend two or three months outside the city in rural settings. She lived in Mill Hollow during the winter of Vita's first year. Matilda moved with Vita to Los Angeles in 1925. Having taught herself typing and shorthand she worked at a number of clerical and secretarial jobs eventually finding employment as a social worker in a Jewish welfare organization. Soon after she unionized her fellow workers. She was a socialist to the end of her life and for years wrote a regular column for the socialist newsletter in Los Angeles and the industrial worker in Chicago. In 1961 she moved to Berkeley where I was a student. She died on her birthday January 9th 1963 which was yesterday. She would have been 131 years old. To paraphrase an African proverb she who is remembered lives.