'So much of what she fought for is still relevant now'

From child laborer to union leader: Too-relevant story of 20th-century immigrant Pauline Newman

In ‘For the Love of Labor,’ ToI contributor Cathryn J. Prince follows the Lithuanian-born labor activist who blazed trails fighting sexism and classism in her new homeland, America

Pauline Newman stared out the New York City factory window at the East River. She could see kids her age playing in a park as she worked alongside fellow Jewish immigrant children. Their labor was dangerous and, it seemed, inescapable for poor youngsters like themselves in the early 20th century. However, Newman did escape and turned her life’s work into fighting the reality she encountered in the United States.

Born in Lithuania, she became a pioneering young activist in her adopted homeland. Leading strikes on behalf of impoverished tenants and factory workers, she helped swell the ranks of unions, while becoming an ally of national labor advocates such as Frances Perkins and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Meanwhile, she had a hidden relationship with her longtime partner and fellow labor activist, Frieda Miller, and helped Miller raise her daughter Elisabeth.

Newman’s story is back in the public eye through a new biography released on March 17, “For the Love of Labor: The Life of Pauline Newman,” penned by longtime Times of Israel contributor Cathryn J. Prince.

“So much of what she fought for, worked for, and continued to work for as she aged — if you take out the date and put in ‘2026,’ I just feel it’s so relevant to now,” Prince said.

“[Reintroducing] her now felt really timely to me,” Prince added. “So many of the issues [she fought for], child labor… safe work conditions, the role of women in the workplace, access to health care, maternity leave and family leave, all these strides were made, but there are still a lot of unresolved issues.”

As for Newman’s romantic relationship with Miller, Prince characterized it as complex in the book.

“They are really able to have this life together, raise Elisabeth, travel the world,” she told The Times of Israel. “It is really not until sometime in the ‘50s when… there is a betrayal, there is a period of estrangement, then they resume life together until Frieda dies.”

Prince noted the duo’s differences — Newman was an immigrant Jew from Lithuania with no formal education, Miller was a non-Jew from Wisconsin with a degree from the University of Chicago.

“I think that things that attracted each other, some of these differences… some of these things do grate on each other [over time],” she said.

A melting pot of assimilation

An author of multiple previous books on once-prominent historical personages who have disappeared in the public consciousness, Prince chronicled Newman’s narrative in several ways. She accessed archival documents in libraries at Cornell, Harvard and New York University — starting with internet queries to Cornell during the COVID-19 pandemic.

She also interviewed Elisabeth’s sons, Hugh and Michael Owen. Collectively, Prince’s research reflected a complex personality: An activist who did not shy away from the picket line or from recruiting union members — even after receiving an injunction not to do the latter, which happened during a strike in Michigan.

Yet Newman also kept aspects of her life hidden, including her relationship with Miller.

Over the years, Prince notes, the largely secular Newman shed much of her Jewish beginnings, from going to synagogue to observing holidays. Miller was not Jewish, and the couple celebrated Christmas with Elisabeth. However, Newman kept at least a trace of her Yiddish accent throughout her life, the author said.

Prince has Eastern European Jewish roots in her own family tree.

“I could relate to [the narrative of] Jewish immigrants [moving] into the Lower East Side, [joining] unions, moving out and up,” Prince said.

Prince likened Newman’s experience to that of many Jewish immigrants to the US in that era: “Their grandparents observed all the holidays, went to synagogue, but [the immigrants] lost their accents, came into an assimilating country.”

Newman’s brother came to the US first, and invited the rest of the family. By that time, Newman had lost her beloved father. He ran a small Jewish schoolhouse in Lithuania, and her persistent nature made an early impact: It was initially off-limits to girls, but she persuaded her father to let her study there.

Nine-year-olds in the workforce

In America, the fatherless family encountered poverty on the Lower East Side, like many other immigrant Jews who settled there. Starting at age nine, Newman went from one unimaginable job to another.

“Her first job was at a hairbrush factory,” Prince said. “Then they fired her. There was a lot of that — there was no [job] security when demand stopped.” She got another job, rolling paper into cigarettes with fellow nine-year-olds: “Their hands were constantly cut up with the rolling paper.”

At the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, she and hundreds of other girls labored to create shirtwaists, an in-demand item among fashionable American women.

“The Triangle was more of a higher-end factory, more modern — and even that was abysmal,” Prince said. “Flammable stuff was all over the place. Air was just not circulating. The doors were locked… If you were late, you might be docked pay, you might be fired.”

Newman sought to better herself, and did so in part by attending a socialist literary circle for fellow immigrants. That’s where she met Rose Schneiderman, the first of several Jewish female future labor activists who would become lifelong friends. In 1907, Newman felt confident enough to lead a strike — a rent strike, earning her the nickname of the “East Side Joan of Arc.” It was the first of many strikes she would become involved in, and Prince deems it partially successful, noting that some landlords lowered the rent.

The first female full-time paid organizer

By 1911, Newman was in Philadelphia doing labor activism work when she learned that there had been a devastating fire at her former employer, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. It claimed the lives of 146 workers, many of whom Newman had known. She and fellow activists seized the moment to press for better working conditions. By this time, she was part of the leadership of a national union, the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union, or the ILGWU.

“She becomes the first female full-time paid organizer,” Prince said. “They do really recognize in her someone who speaks very plainly, very persuasively. Her job was to go outside of New York City — up to Buffalo, to Michigan, where some of the factories were not union shops. She would work to organize them to become union shops because of abysmal conditions, because of pay.”

She also campaigned against the wider forces of sexism and classism — both of which she encountered not only in workplaces, but also among colleagues in the labor movement.

“She was really angry [that the ILGWU leadership] was going to send a male union organizer who got paid more than she was,” Prince said. “There were few women in [labor activism] leadership roles at the time.”

It was in Philadelphia that she first met Miller, an economist. They were opposites in many ways.

“A lot of these differences, I think, are initially what attracted them to each other,” Prince said. “Later, it does cause some tension. [Newman and Miller] do work really well together. Both were involved in the labor movement.”

Their relationship held when Miller became pregnant by a married lover. Miller and Newman created a cover story for a relatively less tolerant era: They claimed that the baby was adopted. This allowed them to raise Elisabeth together.

Occasionally, Newman got to do work-related travel — including a post-World War II visit to West Germany that included the site of the Dachau concentration camp. Prince notes that Newman reflected on the death toll in general terms but not as it related to European Jewry.

“She is horrified and appalled, but misses the heart of the story of what happened at Dachau and to the Jews of Europe,” Prince said.

“For her, there was so much constantly moving forward,” Prince added. “She seemed to have left that [previous] life behind, her childhood in Lithuania. She considered herself Jewish. As she got older, she did more work with Jewish organizations.”

During the 1960s, Newman made two trips to Israel to assess union conditions in the relatively new country.

In Newman’s later years, she incurred multiple losses, including Miller and many in Newman’s circle of friends. Despite a more limited scope of activity, Newman stayed relatively active to the end.

“She had almost no retirement,” Prince said. “She becomes an emeritus of sorts… she grows and she adapts, she’s constantly growing. Her role in the labor movement changes in what she went through — a very young ‘active activist’ on the picket line to more of this emeritus mentor of a younger, up-and-coming generation. And that was something I really liked.”

For the Love of Labor: The Life of Pauline Newman  by Cathryn J. Prince

This article contains affiliate links. If you use these links to make a purchase, The Times of Israel may earn a commission at no additional cost to you.