not so heavy
after all.
He holds up a hand
I know
you have a meeting,
he says,
and I will not try to keep you.
He lifts a basket
onto the table.
But surely
you have time to eat?
And there it is
that smile.
(he must have seen the
yes
on my face
though I had not voiced it,
though I am not fully
comfortable with how quickly
my whole being cries
yes)
Joe
lays out the food
I light a single lamp
we talk quietly
laugh a little.
For a few minutes
within a glowing bubble of light
I am just a girl
basking in the eager attentions
of a lovely
lighthearted
boy.
agitated
The orders in the shops
are piling up.
The girls are restless
agitated.
I say,
to Pauline
to the executive board
to anyone who will listen,
We either grasp this moment
grip tight
or watch it all
slip
through our fingers.
no better time
The union has called a meeting tonight.
So many workers
are coming
there is not a single hall big enough
to hold us all
so we split ourselves between
Cooper Union and the Lyceum,
Beethoven and Astoria Halls.
Speakers have been scheduled
translators booked
I only hope
our pleas will not be met
with more of the same:
wait
have patience.
The thing is
there is no better time
for a general strike.
The shops are slammed with orders
the speedups are unbearable.
Even if the bosses bring in scabs
they will never meet their contracts
unless they negotiate with the union.
The thing is
I have already been on strike
for eleven weeks
I gave up
my dream
to fight for these girls
if they are not ready now
to fight,
then when
will they ever be?
The gorillas came for me
again
last night,
bloodied my face
broke my ribs.
I do not know
how many more beatings
and bruisings
and breakings
I can take.
My kestrel is perched
on the rim of a fluted cornice
near the Cooper Union roof.
I caught sight
of her lithe, dappled form
from half a block away
and since I could only walk slowly,
my hand pressed against my side
taking shallow
birdlike breaths,
I watch her
watching
the crash
and press
of the city below.
I wonder if her hawk’s eyes
can see the puzzle pieces
fitting into place,
can see what
those of us toiling below
cannot.
Cooper Union
The seats are all taken
beneath the arches
between the pillars,
thousands of people packed
in this historic hall
where Mr. Lincoln spoke
against the tyranny
of slavery.
The crowd is a sea of hats;
the girls have come
in their armor.
They line the walls
grateful for something to lean against
after a long day
in the shops.
I wait at the back
away from the wall and its crush
of bodies.
I hold a hand against my ribs
and try
to think
of something else.
The air is stuffy
thick with desperate
hope.
A man in a suit
stands,
speaks.
When he is done
another takes his place.
Then another
and another.
(all in English, no less)
Who do they think they are talking to?
Do they not know we have been working all day?
Do they not know what these girls risk
just by coming here?
Wait,
they say.
Have patience.
You ask too much—
a general strike is dangerous.
It would only fail.
Wait
until the men’s union
makes their strides
and then
we can fight for you.
When a common crow
has something to scold you for,
he never stops,
his cries drone on
and on
and on.
After a while
you do not even hear it anymore.
I can feel the pulse of the room around me
the girls beginning
to fray
to fade.
The man at the podium
shuffles his papers,
retreats
while another gathers himself to stand.
Before the thought
has risen to my mind
I am striding forward
shouting
though the pain in my side
makes me stumble
and sway
I will speak!
I hear my words
and the buzz of grumblings
and pleas
that come after them
but I do not listen.
I push forward—
like wading
through knee-deep water
my skirts sucking at every step.
Then,
as if my bruised and swollen face
earns me the right to speak,
hands reach out
help me forward,
help me up
and I am on the stage
looking out
over a sea of hats.
I gather my breath
tell myself
this is just another
soapbox.
I say,
I have no further patience for talk
as I am one of those who suffers
from the abuses described here.
I move
that we go on a general strike
now.
That is all.
So simple.
The truth often is.
For a moment,
the room is silent
as if every
one within
has paused
to draw a deep, full breath:
STRIKE!
STRIKE!
STRIKE!
STRIKE!
STRIKE!
November 23, 1909
The streets are empty
as I walk slowly from the morning pickets
in front of Leiserson’s
back to the union office.
I pass a newspaper stand;
the papers warn
of a general strike spilling
out of the Lower East Side
onto the streets of Manhattan
into the conscience
of the world.
Me, the reporter casts
as a girl hero
a modern-day
Joan of Arc.
I shake my head.
I know what they did to her
and I wonder
what will I have left
when they are done with me?
And what if
only a handful of girls
are brave enough
to walk out today?
Inside the union office,
we wait,
working
hoping
that by busying our hands
our minds will somehow
quiet.
(but it is no coincidence
that all of us have turned
our chairs
to face the street)
Every eye is on the window
when the girls begin
to trickle,
then stream,
then flood out of the shops
and onto the street.
At the sight of them
—tens
of thousands
of them—
my lungs
are stunned
to stillness,
my heart bangs
against my ribs
as if it would split
my chest apart.
Pauline crashes through the door
Do you see this?
she shouts.
It is more than we dared
to dream
She wraps a scarf around my neck
helps me into my coat
and onto the sidewalk.
I clamp a hand against my broken ribs
to protect them from my
swelling
surging breath
to protect them from the rumbling masses
thundering footsteps
shaking the foundation
this city was built upon;
tearing it down
and building it back up again.
This is not a strike—
Pauline cries,
it is an uprising!
give
All my life
I have been taught
a daughter should be good,
obedient.
That is one thing
I have never been.
But I have also been taught
to give
without the thought
of ever getting back,
to ease the suffering of others.
That,
I think,
I will be doing
the rest of my life.
HISTORICAL NOTE
Clara Lemlich was most likely born between the years of 1886 and 1888 on the outskirts of a small shtetl in the Russian Empire, cited alternately as Gorodok, Kamenets-Podolski, or near Kishinev, in what is now Ukraine and Moldova, respectively. Clara’s father was an orthodox scholar; her mother bore six children and ran a grocery store to support the family. In addition to the three brothers included in this novel, Clara had an older sister named Ella and a brother named Samuel. As with most works of historical fiction, the portrayal of relationships and interactions among family members, while drawn from primary and secondary sources and while consistent with cultural norms of the time period, is fictional.
Clara Lemlich, approximately 1910
credit: Kheel Center, Cornell University, https://www.flickr.com/photos/kheelcenter/5279886332
Since Jewish children were not permitted to attend the local Russian school, and since Clara’s deeply religious parents did not condone schooling for girls, Clara’s education was an act of disobedience. She taught herself to read and write both Yiddish and Russian, earning money for her informal lessons by teaching songs, sewing buttonholes, and writing letters for her neighbors. In protest of the long-standing anti-Semitism in the region, Clara’s father forbade any form of the Russian language in their home, going so far as to throw her books in the fire when she disobeyed. But education was Clara’s greatest desire, and this hunger for knowledge frequently placed her at odds with her family.
The Kishinev pogrom of 1903 was one of many violent attacks against the Russian Jewish population in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Clara and her family likely lived farther from this pogrom than the novel portrays, though she would have been no stranger to violent anti-Semitism; tragically, such acts were both widespread and common. Clara’s family joined the tens of thousands of Jews who fled the Russian Empire both in the wake of mass murder, the desecration of sacred objects, the destruction of property and livelihoods, and in the absence of justice from the state, hoping to find freedom from religious persecution in a new country.
Ship manifests suggest that Clara’s older sister, Ella, was sent with relatives to America shortly after the Kishinev pogrom, followed a few months later by Samuel, with the remaining family departing in 1904. Clara traveled to England along with her younger brothers and parents, where they waited for several months for passage to America, and where Clara attended lectures on social theory. The family left Southampton aboard the vessel New York and passed through Ellis Island on December 12, 1904. Clara’s father, Simon, was detained for a week before being granted admission into the United States, though in the novel it is Nathan whose fictional illness causes him to be detained. Very little is known about the Lemlich family’s journey through Europe and across the Atlantic; hence, this section in the novel is largely informed by historical accounts of other travelers.
Within two weeks of her arrival in New York City, Clara was at work in a garment shop on the Lower East Side. Sweatshops in the early 1900s were terrible places to work. An employee had no protection from sexual harassment, dangerous working conditions and “mistakes” in the pay envelope or with the clock. There was no minimum wage, compensation for overtime or for injury on the job, and a worker could be fired at any time, with no notice. Access to drinking water and toilet facilities were monitored and restricted. If a worker chose to join a union in an attempt to right some of these wrongs, more often than not, she was fired, blacklisted and subsequently unable to find work.
Sweatshop workers assemble flowers in a New York City factory, 1907
credit: Photography Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations
It is no wonder that someone with Clara’s initiative, tenacity and intellect struggled in this environment. In her early years in the United States, Clara strove to find balance between her dream of becoming a doctor, her role in contributing to the family income and the effort to better the conditions and rights of garment workers. After staggeringly long days in the shops, she would make her way to the library or the lecture hall and stay well into the evening to absorb what education she could.
A young girl carries a bundle of coats home to be finished in the evening, and paid by the piece
credit: photo by Lewis Wickes Hine (1874–1940), Library of Congress,
repr
oduction number LC-USZ62-53127
In 1906, Clara helped form and was elected to the executive board of the ILGWU Local 25. Over the years, her tactics and affiliations shifted and evolved—sometimes she jumped from shop to shop, rallying the workers in each before she was discovered and fired, and at other times she walked the picket lines for months at a time. She was repeatedly beaten by strikebreakers and policemen, jailed by magistrates and blacklisted when the strikes concluded. For reasons of pacing within the novel, Clara’s experiences in several garment shops have been condensed and dates altered slightly, and her experiences in several strikes, including elements of the Uprising of the 20,000, have been spread throughout the 1907–1909 time period.
By 1909, when the idea of a general strike in the garment industry began to gain momentum, Clara’s was a familiar face in the union halls, on street corner soapboxes, and at the picket line. In the novel, Pauline Newman is portrayed as Clara’s closest friend and compatriot, though the players in this dramatic historical event were many, and we owe gratitude for the changes brought about by this movement to a large host of women and men from all walks of life.
In real life, Clara was offered the chance to pursue medical school by Mary Beard. She chose, instead, to finish the fight that had so consumed her.
Clara is best known for the impromptu speech she delivered in the Great Hall at Cooper Union, which incited the strike called “The Revolt of the Girls,” or “The Uprising of the 20,000.” It was also during this meeting that the Yiddish oath was pledged, though for reasons of story, this moment is portrayed earlier in the novel. This strike changed the way society viewed poor immigrant women, and the way unions, employers and even the US government treated women in the workforce. The strike emboldened workers, setting off a wave of protests across the United States.
The strikers were predominantly women, many of them Jewish teenagers from Eastern Europe, who walked out against the wishes of their families and despite their desperate economic conditions. They maintained the strike through a bitter winter and in the face of slander, intimidation, beatings and imprisonment. Estimates of the exact number of strikers vary greatly; by some accounts as many as 30,000 workers participated in the strike.
Striking shirtwaist workers sell newspapers to raise awareness of their cause and earn money for the strike fund
credit: Kheel Center, Cornell University,
https://www.flickr.com/photos/kheelcenter/5279774588
Female shirtwaist strikers are taken into custody by the police at Jefferson Market Prison, 1909
credit: Kheel Center, Cornell University,
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