Reaction #2

It’s 1892 and you, Esther Klein, are a 17-year-old textile mill worker in the American northeast. You are new to the country and to industrial work, having worked previously on your parents’ farm in the old country. As much as you longed to come to America, your life as a poor Jewish industrial worker in the United States makes you have second thoughts. And life at the mill—why you and some of the other girls dream of organizing and standing up to the mill owners, but what you’ve seen of other labor organizing worries you! So tell me, Esther, what are the sources of your dissatisfaction as a poor woman, a worker, and a Jewish immigrant? Why have your dreams, of what life in America would be, changed?

Life in America is much different than I had imagined. Back home they spoke of the freedom, the ability to become anything, the endless opportunities that America held. Maybe I came to the wrong place. Father said things were going to change for the better. He said we would find peace here and we would work our way up to riches. "The American Dream!" he would proclaim. Well, my dreams were not to come to an unfamiliar land and be hated by everyone. They look at us like we disgust them. It is as if we reek a foul odor and pain them with our presence. We expected to start off low but these conditions are unacceptable. Everything is so cramped: entire families sleep on top of one another. And work is so exhausting each day. I tended the farm back home but here there is only work in factories. I must go to a mill and work alongside many women for hours with no breaks. There is poor light and no air; many days I feel I will faint. They do not let us go home when we are sick and we must come in to work each day or we will lose our job. I hate waking up so early and going home so late. I hardly have time to complete my tasks around the house in between work at the mill. I have no time to sleep. I heard talk of girls planning to protest the conditions but many women say it is taboo, that they will be fired and replaced immediately. I was approached by a girl not much older than myself about the protest. I believe she is the one who is organizing it. She says that there is a whole labor movement happening and told me of some knights who were successful in getting some of their demands met. I am inspired by her determination but I am not sure I will join. Mother says I need this job, little as it pays, to help support the family. If I am fired we cannot afford to eat. Besides, the girl beside me said that those same knights led a bunch of workers striking some company and police fired on them and killed four workers! Then they protested that too and more people ended up dying. So I do not think I will get involved. I will continue to work for meager earnings and fight to be seen as more than just a woman, just a Jew, because I know in my heart that America is changing and will become the land they spoke of back home. One day I will have everything Father dreamt of and no one will look at me like I am less. Instead they will smile and say, "you see, anything is possible: she made it and so can I".

-Esther Klien