Pauline Newman (labor activist)

Pauline M. Newman (October 18, 1887 – April 8, 1986) was an American labor activist. She is best remembered as the first female general organizer of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) and for six decades of work as the education director of the ILGWU Health Center.

Quotes

"Minimum Wage for Working Women" (February 15, 1915)

• As a worker in the factories for years and as an organizer of working women for five or six years, as one who has come in contact with the working women in the factories during strikes, in organizations and out of organizations, I favor a minimum wage for working women and minors.

• As to the necessity of a minimum wage there is no longer any doubt in the minds of intelligent people be they socialists, social workers or merely fair minded people.

• A working woman is a human being, with a heart, with desires, with aspirations, with ideas and ideals, and when we think of food and shelter we merely think of the actual necessities to cover her body and to feed her. But what about the other things? Have we thought of providing her with books, with money for amusements, and when I speak of amusements I do not speak of the five cent picture shows, I speak of amusements that a girl should go to — a good drama or refined vaudeville — few think about that. Have you thought about a girl providing herself with a good room that had plenty of air, proper ventilation, in a somewhat decent neighborhood. Do you think of all these things when we speak of a minimum wage? Do you want a girl to have a nice comfortable room?

• When we discuss the lives of girls let us be a little more liberal; let us not think of a piece of bread; let us not think of a sandwich... let us think of the working woman as a human being who has her desires to which she is entitled

• Should we not consider a yearly minimum wage on the average?

• The trouble has been that society has neglected its members.

• We know it takes years and years to drill into a girl the absolute necessity for organization, the value of organization, and I am not pessimistic. I know that working girls are awakening to the necessity for organization, but how about those trades where no attempt has as yet been made to organize them? In the meantime the girls are absolutely starved.

Interview (1965)

In Jewish Radicals: A Documentary Reader

• The things we liked most of course were the things that more or less selected or symbolized our own feelings of conditions and life in general. For example, I recall that we liked Thomas Hood's "The Sound of the ship" Now, nothing could come closer to the way we felt than that particular poem. We also read and managed an interest in that other one, "The Bridge of Sighs" also by Thomas Hood. Later, we found "The Masque of Anarchy" by Shelley, and of course in addition to that there were the Jewish poets, like Rosenfeld and Edelshtat. They were magnificent in their writing, in their poetry depicting the life of the people in the shop. There was one writer who I got to know later very well, who wrote a thing just called "Sketches," of conditions and of people in the different shops and naturally in the needle industry in New York. He was magnificent, and we loved everything he wrote. For that, we found time. Now, whether all of us found time, I don't know, but I do know that quite a number of us tried to find an interest outside the job.

• I also recall that on Sunday morning when we didn't have to go to the shop, we went to lectures. A man called Hugh Pentacost lectured at a place on Sixth Avenue and Forty-Second Street, named Merit Hall. It's no longer there. We would come at eleven o'clock, and Mr. Pentacost would lecture on current events. He was an excellent speaker. He was, as I remember, a philosophical anarchist, and we really didn't discuss his philosophy at all. We would take up current events. We were very much interested in that, and we would go there just as religious people would go to synagogue. We would go there every Sunday except on Sundays that we had to work in the shops.

• Some of us got to know about the Socialist Literary Society on the East Side of New York, East Broadway. It was chiefly a young men's club, but some of the young ladies wanted to join...I remember the hot debates that went on at the Socialist Literary Society whether to admit women, and finally the women won out. They voted to admit women, so...We joined the Socialist Literary Society, and there, really, we obtained what we could in the way of education, especially with English literature. The club was very fortunate in obtaining the services of Dr. Henry Newman, no relation of mine, but who was a professor of literature at City College of New York. I think he still is with the Brooklyn Ethical Cultural Society. He was a magnificent teacher. I don't think there are many who can surpass his interest in the students and in the people who came to his classes. And I, personally, shall never forget his kindness and attention. I remember he was teaching us English literature, giving us an idea of what George Eliot and Thackeray and Dickens were about. And he would ask questions to find out whether we really got his point... He was terribly interested in my reading, and I still remember his kindness and attention, because he was a great help to me. Lord knows what I might have read if it weren't for him.

External links

• Jewish Women's Archive page
• Queer Portraits page