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Some manufacturers quickly agreed to the strikers’ demands, including recognition of the union, improved wages and working conditions, a fifty-two-hour workweek and a process for grievances. But other bosses held out for months before giving in. Because of Clara’s public role, when the strike finally came to an end, she was blacklisted and unable to find work.
Despite all the strikers had achieved, government regulation at the time was unsuited to the task of enforcing the new workplace contracts the strikers fought so hard to win; it would take an unprecedented workplace tragedy for the collective conscience of the city to finally bring about much-needed reform. On March 25, 1911, a dropped match started a fire in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. New Yorkers out for a stroll in Washington Square watched helplessly from below as the fire escape broke away from the building and men and women, engulfed in flames, with no other escape left to them, threw themselves to the ground eight stories below. When the grim task of cleanup began, bodies were found piled in the elevator shaft and against locked exit doors. Nearly half of the 146 workers killed in the fire were teenagers.
When Clara and Pauline and many others spoke in the aftermath of the fire of the need for reform, the public finally listened. More than thirty laws were passed regulating working conditions and fire safety in both publicly and privately owned workplaces in New York.
Clara met Joe Shavelson in 1909. They married a few years later and together they raised three children: Charlie, Martha and Rita. Clara Lemlich Shavelson was a wife and mother and grandmother, a tireless activist and a lifelong student. She never realized her dream of attending medical school, but neither did she stop learning. To her last days, she was a passionate student of language and literature, and a lover of the arts.
Over the years, Clara’s causes evolved as the tumultuous twentieth century unfolded. She worked as a suffragist, and as a factory inspector for the union. She participated in hunger marches during the Great Depression, and spoke out against fascism in the years leading up to World War II. She demonstrated for peace during the Korean War, and she even helped the orderlies to organize in the nursing home where she lived out the last years of her life.
Clara died in 1982. She leaves us with a story well worth remembering, and with a challenge: to see the suffering of others as part of ourselves, and to do something about it.
INTERVIEW
The following interview was conducted in 2014 between the author and several members of Clara’s family, including her daughter Rita Margules, her daughter-in-law, Evelyn Velson, and her grandchildren Joel Schaffer, Julia Velson, Jane Margules and Adela Margules.
How did having Clara as a grandmother affect the way you saw the world when you were a teenager, and the person you have become?
Julia: I have this endless belief in the ability of people acting together to change the world. That’s really the greatest legacy I have from Clara and from my dad, believing not only in the necessity of change, but in the possibility of change. When you have these kinds of role models, it’s a little bit easier to believe that people acting together have tremendous power.
She was a pretty amazing woman. She was very intense, very committed to a set of ideals, very brave. She was something.
Adela: My grandmother was one of the most important people in my life as a child. I felt her unconditional love, I learned about her life’s activities through her stories, I learned to love to read from her, and I loved to exercise with her in our living room. She told me I could be anything I wanted to be, and she encouraged me to explore all options, to get an education. Most important, I learned the importance of helping others who were less fortunate and in need of support.
These values, along with a commitment to social justice, equality for all and standing up for what you believe to be right are at the very core of who I am today and how I have lived my life. I have worked as the executive director of a community health center in one of the poorest and most troubled neighborhoods in the city of Boston for thirty-three years. Every day I am able to help others, ensure there is health equity and be the voice for the underserved in many settings. I am not afraid to speak my mind, and I work collaboratively with many others to ensure meaningful change at the community and individual levels. Most of the people we serve are immigrants from all over the world, just like my grandmother was.
Also, my grandmother told me it was important to find someone to share my life with, to love and be loved. I know she would be thrilled to know my wife, Bernita, and to know that we are happy together and that we share the same fundamental social values and views about the importance of family.
Joel: In college, I would always ask myself, “What is the good life? What is the just life? What is the honorable life?” Because of her strength and determination, I would always ask myself, “What would Clara do? What did she think was important? What would my family do?” So it wasn’t just Clara; it was her kids, my mother, that helped me find my way when I got lost. She gave me a sense of mooring in a very difficult world.
In college, there are so many questions to answer. Who do I want to be? Where do I want to go? She made choices that seemed to be based on good values; I thought, maybe I’ll use those same values. As a consequence, my life ended up being in the labor movement; I now mediate labor disputes as a commissioner with the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service.
Just over a hundred years ago, Clara and her family immigrated to the United States. What do you think young immigrants today can learn from her story?
Adela: At a very young age, my grandmother had the courage to stand up for what she believed and the commitment to fight for what is just. A youthful voice is as relevant as a mature voice and can be heard just as loudly.
Julia: I hope that young immigrants can learn that they should stand up in the face of adversity. The only real movements for social change, certainly in the United States, and perhaps everywhere in the world, came from people like my grandmother. They came from the working people, they came from the poor people, they came from the immigrants. I would hope that young immigrants would assume that they have the same kind of rights that my grandmother believed that she had: the right to a decent wage, the right to decent working conditions, the right to not be oppressed and not be discriminated against.
If Clara were alive today, what do you think she would say about the decline of garment unions and the resurgence of sweatshops in the United States?
Jane: I think she would say we have a lot more work to do, that we always have to keep fighting; keep fighting for your rights—to get the ones you want and to keep the ones you have.
It’s kind of sad how the advances of the labor movement have been eaten away at, that the owners of the corporations have found ways to undo these advances by outsourcing jobs to poorer countries, by taking advantage of workers who are not unionized. She would definitely be on the front lines, working to change that, to make sure that people were getting a fair wage, that their workplace was safe and that they had the right to organize.
Just over a hundred years after the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, a garment factory collapsed in Bangladesh, claiming the lives of over one thousand women. What do you think Clara would say about our role as consumers in an international market?
Julia: The notion of globalization is not a new one. Lenin wrote about it more than a hundred years ago. I think the idea that employers would go all over the globe in search of the cheapest labor is an idea to which my grandmother would say, “Well, of course that’s what they are going to do, what would you expect them to do?”
I think that her reaction would be that she would want people to understand the economics of labor, the economics of production. I think her campaign most likely would be an educational one. This is a complicated issue because obviously, yes, I would like to buy all of my clothes from locally sourced, sustainably created pla
ces—those things may or may not be available to me, and if they were available, I may or may not be able to afford them. But I think the key is still education. This goes back to the cliché: Workers of the World, Unite. If you want people to have adequate wages, people all over the world have to have those wages. You can’t just have it in the industrialized states, because the owners of capital will just go someplace else.
Jane: She would be working here to organize consumers to support our sisters and brothers in Bangladesh who are working in these horrible conditions. She would probably organize boycotts of stores that have factories in Bangladesh, probably spearhead a program to educate people about where their clothes are manufactured and the conditions the workers are working under. I think she would be hard at work—she would have a lot to do!
I’ve seen clothes that are labeled organic; they have fair trade policies in coffee and the chocolate trades—why not in the garment trade?
Is there something the history books don’t reveal about Clara that you feel would be important for young people to know about her life and work?
Adela: She was an incredibly loving grandmother who spent endless hours with me, my sister and my brother, looking after us while my mother and father worked. She lived simply in her apartment in Brooklyn, which had two rooms, a tiny kitchen and bathroom. The apartment was filled with books of all kinds and a candy dish waiting with sweets for us. She was really an ordinary woman who would be embarrassed at the “fame” she has garnered over the years.
She made delicious blintzes and rugelach.
Joel: She made the best rugelach you could ever believe, and I think you should include the recipe in the book. I tell you—she would make dozens and she would have to hide them from us!
Evelyn: No doubt you will also receive stories of her rugelach, which she made for all of her grandkids. This labor-intensive effort of crescent-shaped, filled cookies, each wrapped individually in paper, would be sent to the children for special occasions and upon request!
At my husband’s memorial in New York City some old friends of his spoke about his family, their welcoming, open home, the books, the music, the discussions that prevailed.
Clara was a mother as well as a worker. Clara exercised. She had facial exercises and body exercises, and once, when visiting in California, she showed my then-still-young daughter how she could stand on her head! She must have been at least seventy-five at that time.
This book is about Clara’s work in the garment industry, but she had many other causes and pursuits in her life. Can you speak a little bit about her other passions?
Rita: My mother was constantly out getting petitions signed for some social cause. I don’t think she ever lost her ability to understand that people had to work together and bury their differences for a common cause.
Young women, whether they are twelve years old and in middle school, or whether they are sixteen years old and they are in high school, or whether they are twenty years old and they are in college, there are opportunities for them that did not exist when my mother was that age, but she struggled all her life to make sure that these opportunities did not fade away once they had become a part of the norm of life.
During the Depression, she led a bread strike because the cost of bread was so high, she led a meat strike for the same reason, she led a rent strike. She went to Washington when Hoover was the president to fight for the soldiers and the veterans. She also ran for public office in what is now the City Council.
Her entire life, I would say, was spent in social activity. My mother was one of the founders of a women’s organization originally called the United Council of Working-Class Women. The name changed, but the aim was the same: that women should unite for social justice and for causes that affected women’s lives and their ability to maintain their independence. Before she went out to California, to the Jewish Home for the Aged, she was out getting signatures for peace. She was remarkable that way.
Is there anything you would like us to know about Clara’s later years?
Joel: She was a regular person. I think one of the dangers is thinking that people who are politically active are somehow different than us. They are just people who are a little more successful at being what we want to be. I think that’s what Mandela did: he reminded us of who we wanted to be and who we could be, and I think that’s what Clara offers us today. You know, you can choose to live a life of service and a life of honor and dignity without giving up your values.
It has been said that when you’re politically involved, you sometimes overlook your family life and your personal life. That was to some extent true about Clara, but she also did things that made her personally happy. She enjoyed opera and the theater. She loved to cook and she did crazy exercises every day. She was always trying to balance what made her happy with her responsibility to others.
Rita: For years I shunned away from this because she was my mother. She wasn’t Clara Lemlich, she was Clara Shavelson; she was my mother. It’s only in recent years that I have begun to realize that while I regarded her as my mother, she was looked upon by other people, probably thousands that I never knew, as a symbol of what somebody can accomplish with sufficient determination.
She was not afraid to defy her father, who did not think Jewish girls should have an education, and she defied all the so-called customs of the day to prove a point or to make a statement that would carry women further than where they were at that particular moment. Under those circumstances, I really regard her as an inspiration to many, many people.
Until the middle of the 1960s there was almost nothing written about my mother or any other women who made contributions to what eventually became the women’s revolution. I wouldn’t mind if every school talked about the Triangle Fire and the Uprising of the 20,000 and all of these things as part of the history of the United States and the role of women. In much the same way as the people who suffered during the Holocaust don’t want to have it forgotten, this would be an ideal thing to be taught in school.
She’s still my mother. She is an idol, she really is.
She should be.
MANY THANKS TO . . .
Adela Margules
Jane Margules
Rita Margules
Joel Schaffer
Evelyn Velson
Joe Velson
Julia Velson
Liza Kaplan
Michael Green
Talia Benamy
Siobhán Gallagher
Jeanine Henderson
Cindy Howle
Janet Robbins
Ryan Sullivan
and the team at Philomel Books
Ammi-Joan Paquette
and the team at EMLA
Mary Cronin
Tiffany Crowder
Tara Dairman
Kristin Derwich
Cordelia Allen Jensen
Anna Eleanor Jordan
Helen Pyne
Shelley Tanaka
Kathleen Wilson
Meg Wiviott
GLOSSARY OF TERMS
Jewish Culture and Religious Practices
challah: a braided or twisted loaf of sweet egg bread, traditionally baked to celebrate the Sabbath and holidays
daven: to recite Jewish liturgical prayers, often while rocking or swaying slightly
Esther: queen of Persia; one of the heroes of the story of Purim
farbrente: Fiery; devout; often referring to young women of the time period who were instigators of great change
gut yor: a common Yiddish greeting during Rosh Hashanah, meaning “Have a good year”
Haggadah: the text recited during the Passover seder
Haman: the villain of the story of Purim
kiddush cup: a special goblet, often a family heirloom, over which a blessing is said when the cup is filled before the Sabbath and Jewish holiday meals begin
kosher: food and the preparation methods thereof satisfying the requirements of Jewish dietary laws
matzo: unleavened bread that is traditionally served during Passover
megillah: one of several Jewish texts, the most well known of which is the Book of Esther, read during the festival of Purim
meshuggeneh: an insult; a crazy fool
Messiah: in Jewish belief, a man who will put an end to all evil in the world, rebuild the Temple, bring the exiles back to Israel and usher in the world to come
mezuzah: a parchment scroll inscribed with passages of scripture and kept within a decorated case that is affixed to the doorposts in Jewish homes
Pale of Settlement: territory belonging to the Russian Empire within which Jewish people were permitted to live
Pesach: Passover; celebrates the deliverance of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt. The holiday also marks the beginning of spring
Purim: a holiday celebrating the Jews’ rescue from a minister to the king of Persia
rabbi: a Jewish person trained in religious leadership and teaching
Rosh Hashanah: the Jewish New Year
Shabbos: the Jewish Sabbath; a day of religious observance and abstinence from work, kept from Friday at sundown to Saturday at sundown
shiva: the seven-day period of mourning after the burial of a close relative
shmata: a rag or article of clothing, especially a poorly made or ragged one
shul: synagogue; a place of study and worship
siddur: a prayer book
tashlich: a custom symbolizing casting off one’s sins, performed at a river during Rosh Hashanah
Torah: the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy; can also refer to the body of Jewish wisdom, teachings and scripture
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