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Saturday, August 21, 2010

The Sun Shone



by Margaret "Maggie" Wolcott, 1879 Caton, New York
©2011 All rights reserved.




April, Tuesday 1, 1879
We had a lamb. Sun shone. I ironed. Ma went up to Aunt Delia’s. Birt went up to Oscar’s and got the dog machine. Real and Flora come down.


April, Wednesday 2, 1879
Snowed a little. Wind blew west. Ma commenced joining her chain. The hog had pigs. I was going to Ella’s but it is cold.




April, Thursday 3, 1879
Cloudy – 2 years ago today Ella and Birt and I went to Corning and got her tooth out. The men drawed wood.


April, Friday 4, 1879
Julian Babcock died today. 2 years ago today Aurelia and Albert was married. We are joining my 4 squares. Another lamb. Pa and Birt drawed wood. We had a custard.


April, Saturday 5, 1879
Snowed. I mopped. I was to Ella. Kit was up to Julia Bundy’s. Pa went to Corning. Stayed all night. Ella has a new stove.


April, Sunday 6, 1879
Christian cross symbol. Nice day. I stayed to Ella’s till 3 o’clock. Tid and Ella brought me home. Julian Babcock was buried. Betty is sick. Alida Christian died awhile ago.


April, Monday 7, 1879
Pleasant. We washed. Aurelia was sick. Betty is better. Edd Cole come down. Birt went to Corning. Pa went to Alan Linsy’s [Allen Linsey’s] vendue.


April, Tuesday 8, 1879
Nice day. Aunt Delia. Grampa come here and Delia. I begun to smoke cubes [chubs?]


April, Wednesday 9, 1879
Nice day. I went up to Flora’s and got the overall pattern. Ma worked on her Irish chain. The men sawed wood.


April, Thursday 10, 1879
Rained. Mrs. French come up in the Morning. Tid brought her. Mrs. Gorton come down. They quilted. Uncle Jacob come down and brought part of Aunt Delia’s dress. The men sawed wood.


April, Friday 11, 1879
Snowed. Good Friday. Ma and I quilted. We roaled 3 -----. Birt went to Charlie’s and Tom’s. One of the horses kicked him. Pa cut wood. Real worked on Birt’s overalls.


April, Saturday 12, 1879
Nice day. Birt went to the post to mail. We had twin lambs. I mopped. Ma washed the windows. I pulled a tooth Friday.


April, Sunday 13, 1879
Rained. Tid and Ella come up. Easter Sunday. My head ached.


April, Monday 14, 1879
Pleasant. Ma washed. I ironed. Aurelia boiled hemlock bark. Birt commenced plowing the first time in the afternoon. Pa cut wood. Pa went down to Tid’s after the plow and got some ---.


April, Tuesday 15, 1879
B---, Frank and Emil come down. We quilted. Real colored her wash.


April, Wednesday 16, 1879
Pleasant. I mopped. Kittie and Ella come up a-foot. Real come down to Ella’s and Tid come up after them. We quilted. There is a dance up to Mr. Williams’s tonight.


April, Thursday 17, 1879
Snowed. I quilted. Real quilted for the first time. Peddler come here Wednesday. Ma got a bacon and some stove polish. Mr. Mercy come up. Birt made a wash bench.


April, Friday 18, 1879
I blacked the stove. We quilted. Birt made two stools. Pa found a mother lamb.


April, Saturday 19, 1879
Pleasant. Ella come up with Papa. Went to Corning after the doctor. Birt went out and got out Hannah. Aurelia is sick. Did come up tonight. A burial tonight.


April, Sunday 20, 1879
Pleasant. We had company – Frank [sister Frances] and her family. Mattie Welles and Uncle Bill and his wife. Tid and Ella.


April, Monday 21, 1879
Pleasant. Ella and I washed. Birt plowed in the forenoon. Pa went to Corning in the afternoon. Delia come down.


April, Tuesday 22, 1879
Pleasant. Ella ironed. I begun to wash in the front yard. Elsie and her children come in the afternoon. Birt plowed today. Ella and I went to Mercy’s twice. Real is worse.


April, Wednesday 23, 1879
Cloudy. Rained. Commenced apron. Ripped up Aurelia green dress. Frank and Mollie. Wed come down in the evening. Sowed the peas today. Birt sowed out the first no the orchard.


April, Thursday 24, 1879
Cloudy and sun shone part of the day. Sowed the oats today. Finished my apron & mopped. I washed in the yard. Birt got a crab apple tree.


April, Friday 25, 1879
Pleasant. We made pies and Nancy [Wilkins] come and Uncle Henry [Wilkins, age 40]. They are going to start West Tuesday.


April, Saturday 26, 1879
Pleasant in the morning. Rained in the afternoon. It thundered. I wen t up to Flora’s and got a book. Dela Wheat was up to Flora’s. We went and gathered flowers. Tid come up. Ma got the first greens for Real. Birt plowed.


April, Sunday 27, 1879
Pleasant. Henry Seyter come up. Tid stayed all night. I finished reading Flora’s book. Ella is here now.


April, Monday 28, 1879
Rained. We washed. I made some mitts. All the folks went to sleep but Ma & Pa sorted potatoes. Birt plowed up by the swale [a low tract of land, especially one that is moist or marshy].


April, Tuesday 29, 1879
Pleasant. I went up to Frank’s after coal ashes. Fred Brown works there. The leach started to run. Ella commenced to make soap. Birt and Pa went to Corning. Birt took some potatoes. Got one dollar a bushel.


April, Wednesday 30, 1879
Pleasant. I got some greens. Ella finished the soap. We ironed. Birt plowed.



Excerpts from "Plank Road Explorer"


Available soon.

by Henry Marvin, Webbs Mills, New York 1873-1874

©2011 All rights reserved
to be released October 2011 - more info

February, Sunday 1, 1874
I stayed at home all day. John and Lib Flynn and Early & John Kile was here & Bell Patterson was here. Tim was here.

February, Monday 2, 1874
I went to school all day and at nite went to bed as usual. I killed Dave McWhorter’s dog. He was up here last night killing sheep.



February, Tuesday 3, 1874
I went to school all day and at nite I went to spelling school and up to Helme’s to a sociable and stayed a little while and come home. There was about 20 there.

February, Wednesday 4, 1874
I went to school all day and at nite I went down and helped Ed unload a load of bark & then went to the Burg. Sam went home today.

February, Thursday 5, 1874
I went to school all day and at nite I went to the store. There was a donation to Abe Breese’s house tonite.

February, Friday 6, 1874
I went to school all day and at nite I went to the Burg.
Henry Marvin
Webbs Mills,
Chemung County

February, Saturday 7, 1874
I stayed at home in the forenoon and cut logs and in the afternoon I went down and helped Ed unload a load of bark and then we come back and went up to [Rufus] Tanner’s and got a load of wood and took it down to Aunt Julia’s and at nite I went up to Sam Miller’s to a dance. I got home at one o’clock.

February, Sunday 8, 1874
I stayed at home all day and at nite I went down to Ed McConnell’s. Charley Pierce come here to work.

February, Monday 9, 1874
I went to school all day and at nite I went to the Burg.

February Tuesday 10, 1874
I went to school all day and at nite I went up to the schoolhouse to spelling school. They stabbed it at me like God sake. Father discharged Charley today. Bill Miller come here tonite to work.

February Wednesday 11, 1874
I went to school all day and at nite I went to the store.

February, Thursday 12, 1874
I went to school all day and at nite I went up to the schoolhouse to a lecture.

February, Friday 13, 1874
I went to school all day and at nite we had a Dance here. There was about 50 here. I went up and got Sarah Manroe. She stayed all nite.

February, Saturday 14, 1874
I stayed at home all day and at nite I went up to the schoolhouse to a spelling school. Sarah went home tonite 1-1-1- Lyme was here and stayed all nite.

February, Sunday 15, 1874
I went to town and got Jane and Alex and the baby. Tim was here.

February Wednesday 16, 1874
I went to school all day and at night I went to the Burg.

February, Thursday 17, 1874
I went to school all day, and at nite I went up to the schoolhouse to spelling school. I come home. There was not many there to nite. Ed come here to work today.

A JEWISH CINDERELLA


by Dr. Edward Allan Brawley 


Professor Emeritus, Arizona State Univerity

Copyright ©2011. All rights reserved by the author.



In New York City, in the Spring of 1905, it appeared as if fairy tales could really come true for even the poorest and most humble young women toiling in the City’s factories and sweatshops when it was announced to an astonished public that a young Jewish immigrant from Poland was to marry a member of one of the wealthiest Christian families in America. As Stephen Birmingham notes in The Rest of Us, “the American reading public was treated to banner headlines detailing what was billed as a real-life ‘Cinderella Story.’”[i] Departing from its usually iron-clad policy of relegating the coverage of engagements to the society page, The New York Times, on April 5, trumpeted the news of this particular match in a front-page story under the headline: J.G. PHELPS STOKES TO WED YOUNG JEWESS.”[ii] Clearly, for The Times and its readers, this was no run-of-the-mill betrothal.




While the press could provide only the sketchiest detail about Rose Pastor, the bride-to-be – her religion, Eastern European origin, and modest means was about the sum total of what could be reported – there was no shortage of information concerning the prospective bride-groom. J. G. Phelps Stokes, or Graham, as he liked to be called “…was a member of one of New York City’s ‘great families,’” a designation that “was certified when the family headed by Anson Phelps Stokes was included in Ward McAllister’s ‘Four Hundred,’ the number that would comfortably fit into Mrs. William Astor’s ballroom. They were the cream of ‘society’; all others were the milk, not to speak of the curds and whey.”[iii] McAllister was a prominent New York lawyer who acquired a significant fortune through marriage and established himself as an influential judge of the relative social standing of America’s new aristocracy. In this role, he helped the newly rich, such as the Astors, discern who were the true “blue bloods” and who were not.[iv]

The Phelps Stokes family was undoubtedly among the “blue bloods,” being able to trace their lineage back to Colonial times. They had been listed in New York’s Social Register from the time it had begun to be published and currently headed a long-established banking, mining and railroad dynasty. Graham himself was president or vice-president of several of these family businesses. With three Ivy League university degrees, including one in medicine, he had intended to engage in missionary work in Africa but was persuaded by his father to remain in the U. S. and devote his energies to the family’s businesses. As it happened, his duties were not so onerous as to preclude his engagement in missionary work among America’s own poor and dispossessed, including playing a leadership role in New York City’s Settlement Houses.

Although Rose was destined soon to become very well known to the cream of American society, prior to her marriage to Graham she would not have been included among Mrs. Astor’s guests. She was two years old when her mother and step-father fled with her from the Czarist pogroms occurring in the Jewish Pale of Settlement, initially settling in England where Rose attended elementary school, learned to speak flawless English with an interesting British accent, and developed a life-long love of learning. Ten years later, when she was twelve, her parents immigrated to America. Her step-father died very soon thereafter and, as the sole breadwinner for her mother and younger siblings, for the next twelve years, Rose worked as a cigar-wrapper in factories and sweatshops in Cleveland.

During this time, Rose devoted herself to self-education through constant reading. Wrapping cigars for fourteen hours a day was tedious work but practice makes perfect and soon “she discovered that she could sit at her worktable, rolling cigars with one hand, with a book in her lap, turning the pages with the other. Whenever her supervisor moved along the line, inspecting the girls’ work, Rose would tuck the book under her apron.”[v] Ironically, although her step-father’s death propelled Rose into the workforce at a very early age, his absence from her life freed her from the traditional strictures that an Orthodox Jewish father at that time would have felt obliged to observe; boys should study, while girls should prepare themselves for marriage.

Eventually, Rose began to expand her self-development activities by writing short items for newspapers and magazines. Some of her pieces began to be published and, quite unexpectedly, in 1903, she moved to New York City with her family to take up an appointment as a columnist and assistant editor of the English section of the Yiddish-language newspaper, the Tageblatt (Jewish Daily News). When Rose interviewed Graham, a resident of New York’s University Settlement and one of the leaders of the movement, for one of the stories her newspaper was covering – whether or not, as some leaders of the Jewish community feared, the Christian-run Settlement Houses were attempting to convert the Jewish immigrants who used their services -- they found that they had an irresistible mutual attraction, as well as an equally strong commitment to addressing the plight of society’s least favored members.

Graham began inviting Rose to tea and other social gatherings at “the exclusive clubhouse on the settlement’s top floor, and she was exposed to the heady talk that went on there.”[vi] As Rose would recall in her unfinished autobiography, “Both resident workers and guests were full of fine enthusiasms on the subject of the struggling poor. …they were the sources of my inspiration.”[vii] Rose leaves us in no doubt about how that inspiration manifested itself in her case. “The University Settlement was a seething center for the exchange of ideas; and contact with these schools of thought and these glowing advocates stirred most deeply in me the desire to serve my class--the countless millions who toil and live in poverty and wretchedness and insecurity.”[viii]

Rose’s exposure to the radical ideas expounded at the University Settlement was not what radicalized her, however. She had already journeyed a long way down that path before she met Graham. Her own direct experience of exploitation as a factory worker, being fired for her pro-union sympathies, and exposure to the left-wing views held by many members of the Eastern European immigrant communities where she had lived in London, Cleveland and New York, had all had an impact. Besides, on her own initiative, she had undertaken a “systematic study of sociology, especially as expounded in the books of the radicals’ favorite, Lester F. Ward, a wise, self-taught son of the poor.”[ix] Nevertheless, Rose’s radical inclinations were certainly reinforced and refined “by the battle of ideas that she witnessed--and gingerly took part in--on the settlement’s top floor. Here she began to meet the rich mix of people--not just the mix of rich people--that typified her associations to the end of her life.”[x]

Rose and Graham were married on Rose’s twenty-sixth birthday, July 18, 1905, at the Brick House, the Stokes country house in Noroton, Connecticut.
Rose Pastor Stokes soon demonstrated that she was more than just the wife of a well-to-do man. Her sparkling personality and, above all, her oratory, driven by a bright mind and golden tongue, enabled her to play an important role, especially before World War I, in political propaganda, in labor strikes and struggles, and in feminist campaigns such as the fight for suffrage and birth control. She did not hesitate to turn from Socialism to feminism and vice versa to further the cause of women’s rights. And in her limited free time she wrote plays, prose, and poems. Though she easily made the transition from underclass to upper class, she retained an allegiance to the working class under conditions that proved far from easy.”[xi]

Her personal attractiveness, youth, high-profile activism on behalf of the oppressed, and her unswerving adherence to principle made Rose a celebrity and her membership in the Stokes family gave her, for a time, the support to pursue the causes that were important to her. “Over the period 1905 to 1925 she was as famous as any woman in the world. She was more famous than her partners in struggle, including Emma Goldman, Helen Keller, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, and Margaret Sanger.”[xii]

Graham was also an attractive public figure who was fully capable of commanding the attention of an audience, having been “at various times…President of such firms as the Nevada Company, the Phelps Stokes Corporation, Austin Mining Company, and the Nevada Central Railroad Company and Vice-President of the State Bank of Nevada.”[xiii] In his public speaking engagements, especially after he had spoken from the same platform at the Cooper Union in New York City from which Abraham Lincoln had initiated his presidential campaign in 1860, Rose described Graham as resembling “the young Lincoln, without the beard.”[xiv]

After a honeymoon trip to Europe, which included a visit to Rose’s birthplace, the couple returned to their new home on Caritas Island on Long Island Sound. Both the island and the house that was built for them on it were gifts to the newlyweds from Graham’s mother. Rose provided the island’s name, Caritas, Latin for charity, and she and Graham were soon to be joined there by kindred spirits in the cause of radical social reform. “Within a year or so, the Scotts (Leroy and Miriam) moved to a small house on Caritas, as did William English Walling and his wife, Anna Strunsky, forming, if not a Socialist circle, a Socialist triangle on the island. ‘Thus,’ as one writer has pointed out, ‘three wealthy WASPs of impeccable social standing were living on a tiny New England island with their wives, all Jewish women born in Russia.’”[xv]

By this time, the Socialist Party of America, headed by such moderate leaders as Eugene Debs, Morris Hillquit and Victor Berger, had been in existence for about four years and, because of the aura of respectability they gave the Party, it soon began to develop a serious following beyond its working class origins. In his autobiography, Hillquit notes that, while early Socialism in America had had a few intellectuals sprinkled among its leaders, “after about 1905 the movement began to attract ever-growing numbers of men and women in literary and academic circles.”[xvi]

Hillquit recounts one especially noteworthy gathering that he attended in March 1906 that, in his view, was of historic significance for American Socialism. “It was organized by social reformer Robert Hunter, Graham’s brother-in-law, and lasted three days and three nights. Mr. Hunter was then a young man of twenty-eight years. He was a settlement worker imbued with radical views and had just written a book, Poverty, which had attracted some attention.”[xvii] Hunter co-hosted the gathering with Graham, Rose, and Graham’s sister, Helen, at the Phelps Stokes family home in Noroton, Connecticut. Twenty-five people active in social reform efforts were invited to spend three days discussing current social, economic and political issues. “The debate was lively and continuous, interrupted regularly by three meals a day and irregularly and fitfully by sleep. It covered a large range of subjects, with Socialism always in the background. All phases of the Socialist philosophy and methods were expounded, analyzed, attacked and defended.”[xviii]

Rose, who had only very recently married Graham, was described by Hillquit as “a Jewish factory worker of rare charm, who in the aristocratic surroundings of the Noroton ‘Brick House’ looked and acted more to the manner born than almost any other member of the assembly.”[xix] Testimonials like this to Rose’s charm, as well as her goodness and nobility, would continue throughout her life. However, her apparent comfort in the elevated social circles of the Stokes family had some limitations. For example: “in a well-intended but fatuous attempt to involve Rose in a socially acceptable form of charitable activity, her sister-in-law Ethel (Mrs. John Sherman Hoyt) took her to meetings of a flower club, which, Rose found, placed flower boxes in the windows of the poor and sent the no longer fresh bouquets of the rich to the poor in hospitals. Rose soon dropped out of the flower club.”[xx] She was convinced that good deeds and good intentions were insufficient and that “the evils of society stemmed from the system and could be remedied only by changing the system itself.”[xxi]

Shortly after the meeting that they had helped organize at the Stokes home in Noroton, Graham and Rose took a trip to Nevada to fulfill Graham’s responsibilities as President of mining and railroad companies there. A planned side-trip to San Francisco had to be cancelled because of the devastating earthquake and fire that occurred there on April 18, 1906.

They went to Pasadena instead and while there attended a May First meeting. The persuasive eloquence of the Socialist speaker, J. Stitt Wilson, gave them much to think about. On the way home to New York, Graham said to a pensive Rose, “What is it, Roselie -- Socialism?” He told her that if he stayed with the Municipal Ownership League he would be nominated for governor of New York State--but he chose Socialism with Rose. On August 1 they both applied for membership in the Socialist party and were promptly accepted.”[xxii]

Like others, Hillquit credits the growing “literature of exposure” of such muckraking journalists as Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell, Charles Edward Russell and Ray Stannard Baker for creating the foundation for the unprecedented reform spirit that imbued the first years of the last century. They placed a relentless spotlight on a wide array of social issues and presented a convincing case that social, economic and political change was urgently needed. “Thoroughly convinced of the evils, many thoughtful persons began to look for a remedy, and there was Socialism offering a ready and constructive program of radical change. …Socialism became a favorite topic of discussion among New York’s intelligentsia, and the intelligentsia were always strong on discussion.”[xxiii]

Rose and Graham were among the most active participants in the Intercollegiate Socialist Society’s speakers’ bureau which made prominent Socialists like them available to interested groups on college and university campuses around the country. Rose was especially popular as a platform speaker since “her working class experience imparted a passionate intensity to her Socialist views.”[xxiv] Accounts of these speaking engagements suggest that “people who came to hear this famous couple generally dozed peacefully through the husband’s prepared remarks only to be roused to spirited response by the extemporaneous eloquence of the wife.”[xxv] As one contemporary newspaper report stated, “‘Mrs. Stokes is one of the most eloquent women speakers in the world today. She is full of fire and enthusiasm.’”[xxvi] In addition to her platform performances, Rose enjoyed conversing with members of the audience afterwards. For his part, Graham had little or no interest in this type of interaction and would do his best to curtail it. “Years later she realized that ‘he loved the people in theory only; there was no personal warmth in him for them. Often I thought I detected a look of contempt as he looked upon some members of my class.’”[xxvii]

Despite her later reflections on Graham’s attitude towards members of the working class, during the early years of their marriage and their joint activities on behalf of the Socialist cause, Rose “regarded her husband as an informed and thoughtful representative of Socialist thought.”[xxviii] However, as she later recounted, she felt, “a sense of anger and indignation, born of experience, that her husband did not express.”[xxix] While Graham’s “writings and organizational activities reflected a reformist spirit of social uplift, not a determination to fundamentally reconstitute American society,” Rose was speaking and writing “as someone who believed that class was the basic point of division in society.”[xxx]

Among those writings that were beginning to elevate Rose to a leadership position in the Socialist movement, including being featured on the cover of the October 1907 issue of Socialist Women, was her 1906 article for the scholarly Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.[xxxi] This carried the title, “The Condition of Working Women from the Working Woman’s Standpoint” and established Rose’s credentials as something more than a mere propagandist for Socialism or the rather exotic partner of her millionaire Socialist husband. Rose argued that “much of the hardship of the working classes is consequent upon the fact that they are obliged not merely to support their own families, but to contribute, whether they will or not, to the support of other families which live in idle luxury upon the products of working people’s toil.”[xxxii] Such inequity and hardship led, inevitably, to “strikes and industrial disturbances, to ill-will, to class hatred, and to that craving for larger justice which underlies the Socialist program.”[xxxiii]

As a consequence of her growing stature as a recognized spokesperson for the Socialist cause, Rose was frequently approached by the press for comment on current developments in Labor or Socialist circles or to respond to the observations of other commentators. One such occasion led to a memorable headline in the New York Times. Responding to statements by President Theodore Roosevelt to the effect that Socialism was a theory based on divisiveness or class warfare, Rose was quoted as saying that “he is truly ignorant concerning the principles of the most vital questions of our day.” She went on to state that “if Mr. Roosevelt wished to abuse Socialism he must learn what Socialism is.” The article containing these quotes carried the headline “Calls Roosevelt Ignorant.”[xxxiv]

In the meantime, while Graham and those of like mind were attempting to make the case for moderation in advancing the Socialist cause, some of their comrades-in-arms, including Rose, were taking up the cause of the workers in more activist terms and, in some cases, allying themselves with the much more radical International Workers of the World (the IWW or Wobblies in popular parlance) against the Socialist Party moderates. There was never any doubt about Rose’s fervent commitment to doing whatever she could to bring about necessary social change. Despite having risen into the ranks of the wealthy and privileged through her marriage to Graham, she never faltered in her commitment to the working class. In other words, “she could not bring herself to be merely another American ‘success’ story.”[xxxv]

Rose’s marriage to Graham had certainly changed her social and economic circumstances, bringing immediate comfort and the promise of life-long security from want. However, since “a golden key opens any door,”[xxxvi] it also gave her social position and a platform for advancing the causes that she had embraced. At the time of their marriage, Rose “had told Graham that he would be coming to her world, not she to his. What ensued was an earnest attempt, ultimately disastrous, to synthesize both. But Rose’s commitment to the working class and the poor never flagged--and eventually returned her to their ranks.”[xxxvii]

In these early years of their marriage, both Graham and Rose devoted themselves to writing and speaking out on a variety of social issues, as well as engaging in related good works. For example, they were present at the founding meeting of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909.[xxxviii] While Rose did not become an active member, Graham continued to be a strong supporter during the first crucial years of the organization’s existence. In 1911, the promotional materials for the first issue of the NAACP’s magazine, The Crisis, included an endorsement by Graham.[xxxix]

During this period, the Stokeses were frequently the object of press attention and, when they were, Graham was invariably identified as “the millionaire Socialist” while Rose was referred to as the “wife of the millionaire Socialist.”[xl]

A 1910 New York Times interview with Graham Stokes provided a sense of his conception of the Socialist movement. As the newspaper frankly stated, the basic reason for the interview was the apprehension that Socialism had become a serious matter in the United States. The interviewer reported that it was likely the election results that year ‘would give us conservatives cold chills.’ What was there then to this movement? For an answer he would turn to ‘the most interesting Socialist in America,’ James Graham Phelps Stokes. What above all made Graham Stokes interesting was his marriage. The union was evidence of democracy in American life.[xli]

In this interview, Graham compared capitalist profits to “the unjust taxation imposed upon the American colonists by King George. He did not advocate recompense for past wrongs, but the robbery would now have to end.”[xlii]

While Graham and Rose were equally active in speaking out for the Socialist cause, it soon became apparent that Rose was much more inclined than Graham to become a direct participant in the struggle for workers’ rights, including engagement in a number of union organizing efforts and high-profile strikes and mass meetings. For example, in 1909, she threw her support behind the landmark strike by New York’s garment workers.

More than twenty thousand workers had walked out of hundreds of shops in Manhattan and Brooklyn. This strike was an occasion in which socialists, suffragists, and liberals from the Women’s Trade Union League were able to cooperate in support of the strikers. Rose spoke at several public gatherings to rally public support. This struggle, involving thousands in an industry-wide strike, resulted in victory, and she doubtless took satisfaction that she was involved in securing better working and living conditions for the garment workers.[xliii]

This strike and the disastrous Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire that occurred two years later were pivotal events in the history of the labor movement in America, especially among workers in the clothing industry that employed large numbers of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe.

Perhaps no single development galvanized Jewish immigrants for militant unionism and socialism more than the Triangle Shirtwaist fire of 1911. The blaze, which killed more than 140 women, broke out in the nonunion shop on the top floors of the Asch Building off Washington Square in downtown Manhattan. The tragedy made a deep impression on laborers and non-laborers, alike, and touched lives far and wide. …The Yiddish press (reported) the harrowing details of locked doors, inadequate fire escapes, and burning bodies. Louis Waldman, a socialist labor lawyer, was an eyewitness. On his way home from the Cooper Union, where he was studying, Waldman ‘looked up at the burning building, saw girl after girl appear at the reddened windows, pause for a terrified moment, and then leap to the pavement below, to land as mangled, bloody pulp.’[xliv]

To Waldman and his friends in the Socialist and Labor movements, including Morris Hillquit and Rose Schneiderman, a leading force in the garment workers’ organizing efforts, this tragedy was not simply the result of an unfortunate accident, it was a direct consequence of the greed and exploitation that flowed from unrestrained capitalism. At the enormous and moving funeral for the victims of the fire and at the many mass meetings that followed, those in attendance heard rousing speeches from Hillquit, Schneiderman and others who delivered a compelling message about the need for a strong organized working class.[xlv]

The impact on the Labor and Socialist movements of the Triangle fire and the successful strikes and other union organizing efforts that followed cannot be overstated. “In less than five years, the International Ladies’ Garment Workers, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, the Furriers, and the Millinery Workers unions had won contracts and a permanent footing. With their rise came a young and new leadership that was almost wholly Socialist in inclination; and the new unions became the financial backbone and chief organizational props of the Socialist Party.”[xlvi]

However, while working-class consciousness and solidarity were strong in these new unions, their leaders avoided raising the stakes in the struggle between Socialism and capitalism. On the contrary, it can be argued that “they pioneered virtually all the mechanisms for labor-management peace that exist in the field today.”[xlvii] Specifically, “Jewish unions committed to Socialism not only pioneered in labor-management cooperation, they also became laboratories for testing social welfare programs, like the forty-five-hour, five-day week, paid vacations, unemployment and health insurance, pensions, medical care, educational and recreational facilities, credit unions, and low-rent housing cooperatives.”[xlviii] In doing so, they accomplished what the IWW and their allies believed could not be done without violent revolutionary action. The IWW and the more militant members of the Socialist Party underestimated the resiliency of the major political parties who adopted, especially during the Progressive and New Deal Eras, many programs that were initially advocated by the Socialist and Labor movements.

These achievements did not occur without considerable pain and suffering. Ande Manners, in Poor Cousins, gives an amusing but nonetheless moving account of what that struggle was like for those at the forefront. It was fairly common for employers and other folks opposed to Socialist or union organizing activities to hire agitators to break up meetings or otherwise cause disturbances requiring police intervention. At one such gathering on the Lower East Side, the agitators had managed to create enough mayhem to justify calling in the forces of law and order. “One of their number reported to the police that the Socialists were rioting. The police bounded in, clubs swinging freely, whacking radical and nonradical alike. ‘But, Lieutenant,’ a nonradical complained indignantly, ‘I’m an anti-Socialist!!” ‘I don’t give a damn what kind of Socialist you are,’ the officer bellowed. ‘Break it up!’“[xlix]

While Graham and other moderate Socialists focused on political action, Rose and people of like mind were taking up the cause of working people in more direct confrontational ways. For example, she was an active participant in the long and bitter strike against the silk manufacturers in Patterson, New Jersey, in 1913, and she played a key role in another industrial conflict that would have serious personal consequences for her. This was the 1912 strike of the International Hotel Workers Union against New York City hotels and restaurants, including the Plaza, the Waldorf-Astoria, and Delmonico’s. This strike was backed by the IWW and, based on her strong belief in the working-class solidarity, Rose not only spoke at the mass gatherings of the strikers and their supporters, she “immersed herself in the actual organizational work of the strikers.”[l] As it happened, Graham had an uncle in New York City’s hotel industry, in the person of William Earl Dodge Stokes. “This very rich uncle…was the owner of the Ansonia Hotel, which occupies the entire Broadway block from 73rd to 74th streets. He was against the strike, he was against foreigners, and, for both those reasons, he was against Rose Stokes, his niece by marriage.”[li]

As Rose became more deeply committed and actively engaged with radical elements in the class struggle, other members of the extended Phelps Stokes family became increasingly distressed by Rose’s high-profile role in a number of activities that involved direct confrontations with the forces of law and order. One such incident occurred almost immediately after she became active in the birth control movement. In early 1916, Rose chaired a dinner and rally in support of Margaret Sanger just before Sanger’s trial for violating the Comstock Act that forbade the dissemination of birth control information. Shortly afterwards, she spoke at a rally at Carnegie Hall welcoming Emma Goldman back to the cause, after the latter served a jail term for breaking the same law.

At the Goldman rally, Rose did not limit herself to making speeches but offered the audience printed materials that described various birth control methods. “The crowd rushed to take the proffered information and a near riot ensued. Rose escaped unharmed and waited for the expected arrest for having incited disorder. But, perhaps because of the Stokeses’ elevated social position, there would be no arrest.”[lii] While Rose was distressed at the thought that her position in society probably saved her from the fate that Sanger, Goldman and others suffered for their convictions, the Stokes family was even more dismayed by the Carnegie Hall incident but for different reasons.
“Polite discourse, even for the purpose of articulating radical views, was one thing, but for the Stokeses the Carnegie Hall scene smacked of rowdyism. Anson Phelps Stokes wrote to Rose at some length, explaining his position that defiance of law and order was wrong. He hoped she would apologize for her defiance of the police and indicate she had been misquoted in the press. But Rose insisted she had done nothing that required apology or retraction.”[liii]

On the contrary, she stated that she felt a moral obligation to publicize, for women nationwide, the existence of effective methods of birth control. Furthermore, “she believed the Comstock Law was vicious and she wanted that point driven home by its enforcement in her case.”[liv]

The alliance of Rose with Goldman, even though the cause was birth control rather than revolution, would certainly not have sat well with the Stokes family or Rose’s more moderate comrades in the Socialist and Labor movements. As Sacher has observed, “no figure personified Jewish radicalism in the American mind as thoroughly as an impassioned, unrelenting dynamo of an anarchist, Emma Goldman.”[lv]

Already weakened by competition from the major parties that were pressing for progressive reforms, the Socialist Party would not recover from conflict over the Party’s opposition to America’s role in World War I, the Red Scare that followed, and the ascendance of Bolshevism.[lvi] Fink cites these three major events as having had a disorienting impact upon the psychic and political compasses of American Socialists from 1914 onwards:

First came the collapse of international Socialist solidarity in the face of nationalist war-mongering, a disillusionment most dramatically signaled in the August 1914 support for German war credits by SPD leadership in the Reichstag. The second shock emerged in the powerful U.S. mobilization around the war effort, initially resisted by most left-wing and progressive figures but championed after 1916 by the intellectual president, Woodrow Wilson, along with an intense appeal to patriotic service. Finally, and perhaps most critically, the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 projected a new and provocative Socialist face, a militant mien that all but demanded total identification or adamant rejection.[lvii]

Shannon notes that “in the late summer of 1914, Americans were stunned when they read in their newspapers that war was beginning in Europe. One by one, European Nations declared war upon one another.”[lviii] In the face of these alarming events in Europe, American Socialists were as confused as everyone else. At Socialist Congress after Socialist Congress, the European Socialist Parties had pledged that they would never again fight their fellow workers in the capitalists’ wars. However, when war was declared, they not only failed to prevent it but actively supported their countries’ participation. Patriotism had trumped class solidarity.

Most members of the Socialist Party of America, including Debs, Hillquit and Berger from among the Party leadership, were firm in their opposition to the war but were at a loss to know what to do to stop it. Aside from speaking out against it, there was little to be done and, eventually, they concentrated their energies on campaigning against the entry of the United States into the conflict.[lix] This is, indeed, where the Socialist Party of America officially stood on the war issue. However, “a sizable minority of Socialists, mostly intellectuals, were for the allied cause from the beginning. They were not for war per se and they regretted the war had come; but they argued, now that it had come, it should be fought through to its conclusion and, they hoped, German militarism crushed. This group grew in size and its point of view became more pronounced as time went on.”[lx] Graham was among this group.

Rose changed her position several times, serving as honorary vice-chair of the Women’s Peace Party of New York until March 1917 when she resigned and added her signature to a pro-war manifesto that Graham drafted. Published in the New York Call on March 24, 1917, it vigorously attacked the Socialist Party’s opposition to the war and endorsed United States intervention which was, by that time, imminent. The essence of their position was that “‘to refuse to resist international crime is to be unworthy of the name Socialist. It is our present duty to the cause of internationalism to support our government in international law and order which are essential alike to Socialism and to civilization.’”[lxi] On April 6, 1917, at the urging of President Woodrow Wilson, who had been re-elected only months earlier as the candidate who had kept America out of the war, the U.S. Congress passed a formal declaration of war.

Rose soon reversed her previous position, parting company with Graham on the war issue, and cast her lot with the Socialist Party majority. Graham, along with other leading intellectuals, left the Party and, in various ways, supported the war effort. As Draper was later to observe, the coming of the war and, in particular, the Socialist Party’s 1917 anti-war resolution, was disastrous for the Party. “It caused the pro-war group to desert the Socialist Party. The loss was much greater qualitatively than quantitatively. Among the bolters were some of the best-known Socialist propagandists.” These included such journalists and writers as Upton Sinclair, Charles Edward Russell and many others. “Most important, Socialist trade-union leaders were equally pro-war, though they departed more discreetly. At one blow, the war deprived the Party of those who had enabled it to make the greatest inroads among the middle class and the organized working class.”[lxii]

As Rose was whole-heartedly throwing in her lot with the anti-war Socialist Party majority, for his part, “Graham’s intransigent position on the war led him into a vindictive spirit, a harsh, brutal attitude towards those who did not agree with him.”[lxiii] For example, about the time he joined the National Guard, he wrote a letter to the Vice President and the Speaker of the House demanding an investigation into the supposedly treasonous actions of three U. S. Senators and three Congressmen. He further urged that if, upon investigation, “‘any are guilty, let the guilty be shot at once without an hour’s delay.’”[lxiv] Such intemperate attacks upon those considered to be insufficiently patriotic, even former colleagues in the Socialist Party, were not uncommon. For example, “A.M. Simons accused Victor Berger of accepting subsidies from German agents to slant his Milwaukee Leader in favor of Germany.”[lxv]

Once the war was well and truly underway, such nationalistic fervor became even more heated and irrational. Public antipathy was not only directed at German-born Americans and those with German-sounding names but also towards Socialists of all stripes on account of their supposed lack of patriotism. “Socialists everywhere had difficulty renting halls for their meetings, had their meetings broken up by local police, encountered physical violence at the hands of patriotic vigilantes, and suffered economic discrimination from anti-Socialist employers.”[lxvi]

Socialists had no recourse in law against mob action, for the law itself was being amended so as seriously to restrict Socialist action. …The Espionage Act, which became law on June 15, 1917, granted the Federal Government the power to censor newspapers and ban them from the mails, and made obstruction of the draft or enlistment service punishable by a fine of up to $10,000 and twenty years’ imprisonment. Additional powers of censorship were given in the Trading-with-the-Enemy Act of October 6, 1917, and the amendment of the Espionage Act of May 16, 1918, sometimes called the Sedition Act, made even attempting to obstruct the draft a felony. Socialists were frequently to run afoul of these laws.”[lxvii]

For example, in the summer of 1917, the Socialist publication Appeal to Reason was still speaking out vigorously against the war. In its June 7th issue, it was charging corporate interests with pressuring the Federal Government to loosen immigration restrictions in order to ease the purported shortage of labor caused by the war effort. They accused the big corporations of trying to use the war emergency to stab organized labor in the back. “There could be nothing more infamous than this cold-blooded, calculating proposal of Big Business to rob the workers of their rights in home industry while they are being forced to fight abroad. It is just such tactics as this that make patriotism seem a farce to the workingman upon whom war falls as an unmixed evil and an unmitigated blow.”[lxviii] The article continued to hammer home the message that working people were being doubly victimized by the machinations of corporate interests.

Before 1917 was over, the Appeal to Reason was no longer publishing. It was not alone. “By the end of the war, under constant harassment from federal agents, dozens of Socialist newspapers--the Party’s primary method of building and leading its membership--had been banned from the mails and driven out of business.”[lxix] While this was going on, the popular press was continuing to stir up public support for the war, making it clear that dissent was unpatriotic, dangerous and needed to be suppressed.

Not only were the Party’s instruments of organization and communication under attack; those individuals, whether leaders or rank-and-file members, who spoke out against the war faced the wrath of their fellow-citizens and their government. Rose, along with Kate Richards O’Hare, Victor Berger, Bill Haywood, and Eugene Debs, were only the most notable of the Socialist leaders arrested, convicted and in some cases, imprisoned under the newly enacted laws. In all, over two thousand Socialists were prosecuted by the Federal Government for sedition.[lxx]

In Rose’s case, her problems with the law flowed from comments she made while on a speaking tour of the Midwest in early 1918. Rose’s about-face on the war issue, compounded with the escalation of her commitment to the radical Left, not only damaged her marriage but also incited the anger and increased the malevolence of her old nemesis, Graham’s uncle, William Earl Dodge Stokes, whom she had antagonized by her role in the hotel worker’s strike. “Uncle Will” Stokes, a fervent patriot, “became a volunteer informant to government investigative agencies and caused a surveillance of Rose’s activities that culminated in her trial under the so-called Espionage Act.”[lxxi]

In a talk to a women’s club in Kansas City, Missouri, on March 18, 1918, Rose made clear her opposition to the war and linked its cause to the profiteering motives of the capitalists. In case there was any question about what she had meant, she wrote a follow-up letter of clarification to the editor the Kansas City Star, stating that: “No government which is for the profiteers can also be for the people, and I am for the people, while the government is for the profiteers.”[lxxii] Before the week was out, Federal agents had arrested Rose and charged her with violating the Espionage Act. Graham posted bail for her but did not return to Kansas City to be with her during the trial two months later.

The principal government witnesses at the trial included members of the women’s club who had listened to Rose’s two-hour speech. Among the statements she was reported to have made, the following were the most incriminating:

American soldiers were not in the war ‘to save the world for democracy,’ but to save the loans extended to the Allies by J.P. Morgan, and that if we were ‘sincere’ in our professed democratic crusade, we would have entered the conflagration when the ‘neutrality of Belgium had been violated’ or when the Lusitania had been torpedoed. Stokes had also said that she was sorry that she had written a patriotic poem after witnessing young American boys marching on Fifth Avenue in New York City, and that when they came home from the trenches on the Western front, this country would be plunged into revolution. She had praised the Bolsheviks, argued that the work of the Red Cross was ‘mere war camouflage,’ and spoke well of Emma Goldman.[lxxiii]

At the conclusion of the two-day trial, Rose was found guilty of all three charges which, in essence, stated that she “intended to make false statements in order to interfere with the success of American military forces, to cause refusal of duty, and to obstruct the enlistment or recruitment services of the United States.”[lxxiv] She was given a ten-year prison sentence. Despite serious doubts about the legitimacy of the charges, verdict, and length of sentence voiced publicly in the U.S. Congress and among senior Wilson administration officials, “President Wilson wrote to Attorney General Thomas Gregory that the Stokes verdict was ‘very just’ and asked whether it would be possible to indict the managing editor of the Kansas City Star for having printed her letter in the newspaper.”[lxxv] As Birmingham notes, “it began to seem as though the first Jewish woman in the Social Register, who may also have been the first Communist in the Social Register, might also be one of the first Social Register listees to go to jail.” [lxxvi]

In Rose’s case, and as others were to learn, “Wilsonian rhetoric about global freedom had been accompanied by willingness to extinguish constitutional liberty at home.”[lxxvii] Fortunately for Rose, her conviction was overturned on appeal in January 1920 and a new trial was ordered. By the time this was scheduled, Wilson was out of office, the war was over, and the new Harding administration had little interest in prosecuting Rose again. The charges against her were, therefore, vacated.

Others were not so fortunate. While Rose’s case was under appeal, Debs was charged with ten violations of the Espionage Act for his outspoken denunciation of the war. In a show of solidarity and personal support, Rose attended his trial in Cleveland. In his address to the jury, Debs decried the harsh prison sentences that had just been handed down to Rose and others, noting that they had devoted their lives to alleviating the suffering of the poor and afflicted. Rather than imprisoning them, an enlightened society would give them “places of honor and citizens would revere them for their works and call them blessed.”[lxxviii]

Like Rose, Debs was sentenced to ten years in prison. Unlike her, he would have to serve his sentence. He was not alone in this regard. Following a five-month mass trial that was going on at the same time as the Debs trial, 101 members of the IWW were convicted of conspiracy to obstruct the war. “15 received sentences of twenty years; 33 got ten years; and fines totaling more than $2.5 million were levied. Most of the convicted Wobblies spent many years in prison.”[lxxix]

At least at first, Debs, Hillquit and Berger had applauded the 1917 developments in Russia. They would subsequently change their minds when the Bolsheviks decreed, with the founding of the Third International in 1919, immediate world-wide revolution and the subservience of all national revolutionary movements to the Russian Communist Party. However, before the Socialist Party became hopelessly divided by the alarming actions of the Bolsheviks, with one faction, including Rose, breaking away to form the American Communist Party, a number of other events had taken place in the United States, as a result of popular alarm and government action, which would weaken the Party beyond remedy.

A sweep by hundreds of police and special agents on November 8, acting for the Lusk Committee, had resulted in the apprehension of a thousand persons in New York City and the confiscation of tons of publications and records. Most of those arrested were soon released, but some 75 were indicted on various charges. Many of them were aliens who were added to a federal roundup of ‘Russians’ and were among 249 deportees aboard the former troop transport Buford, which became known as the Soviet Ark, and were carried off to Soviet Russia, without ‘due process,’ sailing on December 21, 1919. Emma Goldman and (her partner) Alexander Berkman were among these deportees. Ultimately, three thousand more faced deportation.[lxxx]

These events were followed, almost immediately, by the equally draconian “Palmer Raids.” The newly-appointed U.S. Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer, ordered the arrest and indictment of over five thousand suspected “Reds” who were rounded up by federal agents in coordinated raids all across the country on January 1st and 2nd, 1920. Of the thousands who were arrested and indicted, only about three hundred were convicted and an even smaller number served their full sentences. However, “the drastic roundup and the tensions and cost of numerous defense cases were devastating acts of intimidation and enforced a two-year period of illegality on the Communist Parties.”[lxxxi]

While membership of the ‘illegal’ Communist Parties declined dramatically during this period, the hard-core leadership, including Rose, remained firm in their commitment to the Communist cause. She subsequently “served as a member of the Central Executive Committee of the Workers Party, the legal extension of the Communist Party that had been driven underground by the Red Scare” and attended “the Fourth Congress of the Communist International, held in Moscow during November-December 1922.”[lxxxii]

By this time, Rose’s marriage to Graham had been damaged beyond repair. Both admitted the obvious but they could not agree on the solution. Desertion or adultery by either party were the only grounds for divorce at that time and neither party was willing to be guilty of such an accusation, since it was probably not true. Furthermore, in Graham’s case, such an accusation, let alone an admission, would have destroyed his reputation and place in society. Consequently, Rose became the willing or unwilling sacrificial lamb to the failed marriage and Graham’s face-saving. As the climate in their home had become increasingly chilly, Rose had sought refuge in the apartment of a friend, V. J. Jerome, Socialist magazine writer and editor. This gave Graham the grounds he needed – cohabitation and presumed adultery – to sue Rose successfully for divorce in 1925.

…despite its eventual dissolution, the Pastor-Stokes marriage lent an aura of fabulous romance to the halls of the University Settlement. For years afterwards, to all the yearning sweatshop girls who came there to study English, letter writing, dancing, parliamentary procedure, gymnastics, the works of Emerson and Tolstoy, art history, and other areas of self-improvement, the legend of a poor Jewish girl from the East Side who ‘caught’ a handsome socialite millionaire socialist – who was also a doctor – proved that at such institutions anything was possible.[lxxxiii]

Displaying the innocence (some would say naivity) that characterized many of her actions during her lifetime, Rose did not contest or even negotiate the terms of her divorce, ending up with no financial settlement and the last decade of her life lived out in severely impoverished circumstances. She died of breast cancer at age 53 in 1933 while undergoing an experimental treatment in Germany – a trip which was underwritten by the fundraising efforts of her former comrades-in-arms on the Left. Her life course can be viewed as inspirational, naïve, or salutary, depending on your point of view. What is beyond doubt is her unswerving commitment, regardless of what life had in store for her, to the improvement of the lot of ordinary working people.

__________________________________


Endnotes

[i] Stephen Birmingham, The Rest of Us: The Rise of America’s Eastern European Jews (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1984), p. 50.
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Arthur Zipser and Pearl Zipser, Fire and Grace; The Life of Rose Pastor Stokes (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1989) p.27.
[iv] Ward McAllister, Society As I Found It (New York: Arno Press, 1890).
[v] Birmingham, The Rest of Us, p. 52.
[vi] Zipser and Zipser, Fire and Grace, p. 31.
[vii] Herbert Shapiro and David L. Sterling, eds., "I Belong To The Working Class:" The Unfinished Autobiography of Rose Pastor Stokes (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1992), p. 95.
[viii] Ibid.
[ix] Zipser and Zipser, Fire and Grace, p. 31.
[x] Ibid.
[xi] Ibid., p. xii.
[xii] Ibid., p. xi.
[xiii] Ibid., p. 30.
[xiv] Ibid., p. 40.
[xv] Ibid., p. 51.
[xvi] Morris Hillquit, Loose Leaves From a Busy Life (New York: Macmillan, 1934), p. 55.
[xvii] Ibid.
[xviii] Ibid., p. 58.
[xix] Ibid., p. 57.
[xx] Zipser and Zipser, Fire and Grace, p. 46.
[xxi] Ibid., p. 37.
[xxii] Ibid., p. 46.
[xxiii] Hillquit, Loose Leaves from a Busy Life, p. 56.
[xxiv] Herbert Shapiro and David L. Sterling, eds., "I Belong To The Working Class:" The Unfinished Autobiography of Rose Pastor Stokes (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1992), p. xxiii.
[xxv] Zipser and Zipser, Fire and Grace, p. 55.
[xxvi] Ibid., p. 83.
[xxvii] Ibid.
[xxviii] Shapiro and Sterling, I Belong to the Working Class, p. xxiii.
[xxix] Ibid., p. xx.
[xxx] Ibid., pp. xviii-ix.
[xxxi] Rose H. Phelps Stokes, “The Condition of Working Women from the Working Woman's Point of View,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 27 (1906): 627-637.
[xxxii] Ibid., p. 166.
[xxxiii] Ibid.
[xxxiv] New York Times, “Calls Roosevelt Ignorant,” July 15, 1908.
[xxxv] Shapiro and Sterling, "I Belong To The Working Class,:" p. x.
[xxxvi] Janet Gleeson, Millionaire: The Philanderer, Gambler and Duelist Who Invented Modern Finance (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999), p. 146.
[xxxvii] Zipser and Zipser, Fire and Grace, p. 42.
[xxxviii] Ibid., p. 75.
[xxxix] Ibid., p. 76.
[xl] Ibid., p. 64.
[xli] Shapiro and Sterling, I Belong to the Working Class, p. xxiv.
[xlii] Ibid.
[xliii] Ibid., p. xxv.
[xliv] Gerald Sorin, A Time for Building: The Third Migration, 1880-1920. Vol. III of The Jewish People in America (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), pp. 129-130.
[xlv] Ibid., p. 130.
[xlvi] Daniel Bell, Marxian Socialism in the United States (Princeton, NJ: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1967), p. 310.
[xlvii] Sorin, A Time for Building, p. 135.
[xlviii] Ibid., p. 130.
[xlix] Ande Manners, Poor Cousins (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1972), p. 295.
[l] Shapiro and Sterling, I Belong to the Working Class, p. xxvi.
[li] Zipser and Zipser, Fire and Grace, p. 90.
[lii] Shapiro and Sterling, I Belong to the Working Class, pp. xxviii-xxix.
[liii] Ibid., p. xxix.
[liv] Ibid.
[lv] Howard M. Sacher, A History of the Jews in America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), p. 296.
[lvi] John H. M. Laslett and Seymour M. Lipset, Failure of a Dream? Essays in the History of American Socialism (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1974), p. ix.
[lvii] Leon Fink, Progressive Intellectuals and the Dilemmas of Democratic Commitment (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), pp. 135-136.
[lviii] David A. Shannon, The Socialist Party of America: A History (Chicago, IL: Quadrangle Books, 1967), p. 81.
[lix] Ibid., pp. 85-86.
[lx] Ibid., p. 83.
[lxi] Zipser and Zipser, Fire and Grace, p. 167.
[lxii] Theodore Draper, The Roots of American Communism (New York: Viking Press, 1957), p. 93.
[lxiii] Zipser and Zipser, Fire and Grace, p. 172.
[lxiv] Ibid., p. 171.
[lxv] Ibid.
[lxvi] Shannon, The Socialist Party of America, p. 109.
[lxvii] Ibid., pp. 109-110.
[lxviii] Appeal to Reason, “Will Asiatics Take the Jobs of Conscripted Americans?” June 7, 1917, p. 4.
[lxix] James Weinstein, The Long Detour: The History and Future of the American Left (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2003), p. 71.
[lxx] Henry W. Laidler, “Present Status of Socialism in America,” Socialist Review 8 (December 1919), p. 35.
[lxxi] Zipser and Zipser, Fire and Grace, p. 176.
[lxxii] Shapiro and Sterling, I Belong to the Working Class, p. xxii.
[lxxiii] Ibid., p. xxxiii.
[lxxiv] Ibid., pp. xxxii-xxxiii.
[lxxv] Ibid., p. xxxvii.
[lxxvi] Birmingham, The Rest of Us, p. 128.
[lxxvii] Shapiro and Sterling, I Belong to the Working Class, p. xxxviii.
[lxxviii] Ibid., p. xxxix.
[lxxix] Zipser and Zipser, Fire and Grace, p. 190.
[lxxx] Ibid., p. 214.
[lxxxi] Ibid., p. 215.
[lxxxii] Shapiro and Sterling, I Belong to the Working Class, p. xli.
[lxxxiii] Manners, Poor Cousins, p. 141.

Excerpts from "My Story - A Year in the Life of a Country Girl"

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by Ida Burnett, age 15
Logan, New York 1880
©2009 All rights reserved by author



January, Thursday 1, 1880
I and Ma got breakfast. Miss Vandoren has been here all day and Mate and Frank has been here all the afternoon. Alex Dunham and Abram Wyatt is here.

January, Friday 2, 1880
I went to school today. Carrie went up to Mate’s this afternoon and Fred Baker was here. Manroe Kingsley was here to dinner. Jane called this evening.



January, Saturday 3, 1880
I and Ma got breakfast. Went to school [? it’s Saturday] Pa went to Reynoldsville. Mate was here all day. We had company in the evening - six Baker children was here and three Dickens. We did not go to bed until two o’clock.

January, Sunday 4, 1880
We did not get up very early this morning and breakfast [was] at ten. Did not go to church this morning. Pa went to Trumansburg today. Went to [church?] tonight. Carrie looked for George a little tonite but he did not come. It reigned [rained].

January, Monday 5, 1880
Ma got breakfast this morning alone. I stayed to-home from school and washed. Ed went to milk. Mate [something] wiped the breakfast and dinner dishes for Ma.

January, Tuesday 6, 1880
I went to school today. Charlie Matison left the school I am sure more will go.----------

January, Wednesday 7, 1880
Ma got the moste [sic] of the breakfast. I baked the pancakes [sic]. Went to school today. Mate was down here all day and the boyes [boys’] shirts home with her to make.

January, Thursday 8, 1880
I went home with Em [Emily] Rudy last night - we had a splendid time. I whispered in school today and the teacher made me write a word 100 times for it and I am a-doing it now.

January, Friday 9, 1880
I and Ma got breakfast. Went to school. Mate has been here all day. Ma and her went to Bardett [Burdett]. Ma got I and Carrie a black cashmere dress. They both cost $23.90. Mine cost alone $16.90. I was down to Jane’s a little while. Went over [to] the lake to see her sister.

January, Saturday 10, 1880
I got breakfast and washed the dishes. I and Ma went to meeting. Carrie come home with us. Carrie got a letter from George [something] today. Answered it today. Saw the two brides or Carrie. Elmer helped me get the horses this morning. We went to meeting tonight.

January, Monday 12, 1880
Henry [older brother] and Pa went to Seneca Falls, Geneva, and Canandaigua. Carrie washed and I done the housework. I did not go to school today. Ed went after the children. Mate has been down all day. Ed went after the school children [sic]. I got all ready to go after [something]- did not go. Will and the family got back to knight [sic].

January, Tuesday 13, 1880
I went down after Poly - stoped [sic] to the grosey [sic] and the minister was there. I did not go to school today. Poly fitted my dress. Did not go the ladies [sic] aid society tonite. Carrie done all of the work today and I am to do it tomorrow.

January, Wednesday 14, 1880
Carrie slept with Poly last night. I have done all of the work today. Rote [sic] a letter to Charlie Salisbury today for Wallace. George Weaver was here this evening. Henry went ….Poly has been here all day to…..Pa went to Watkins - got my shoes - they cost 85¢.

January, Thursday 15, 1880
I did not go to school. Poly has worked on our dresses. Pa went to Watkins. Shephenson and Parson---- was here today. Mate was down a little while at night. Will Kustern and Billey Dickerson called.

January, Friday 16, 1880
We did not get up very early this morning. Pop worked all day and got donte tonight. Henry went and took her home. Ed went to She…. I have got an awful pain in my side tonight. Had some chickens for dinner. We took some….Enfield tomorrow.

January, Saturday 17, 1880
Manerva Mathews was down here all day. Mate Gittens went to Logan a-foot and got the  news. I went and met her. She read Little Brownie to me. I got dinner. Carrie washed dishes.

January, Sunday 18, 1880
We did not go to church this morning but we did tonight. Mrs. Smith and her children rode over with us. Mrs. Socket [Sacket] was over tonight. There was a man here yesterday and invited us to a surprise party for Monroe Dickenson.

January, Monday 19, 1880
I went to school today and traded seats with Henry. Henry and Will are sick of my boredom a-ready. Carrie washed. Wallace is sick tonight. I went to Jane’s and bought some butter.

January, Tuesday 20, 1880
I did not get up till breakfast was ready. Went to school. Emily Rudy came home with us tonight and stayed all knight. I and Em and Ada slept in the parler [sic] bedroom and we had to get up and make the bed a half dozen times.

January, Wednesday 21, 1880
I went to school today. Ada went home with Em Rudy and stayed all night. Ed went to the Library but they did not any of the rest of us go, He got the-----and I and Carrie up and went up stairs and red [sic] Little Brownie.

January, Thursday 22, 1880
I went to school today. We practiced our pieces for tomorrow. The boyes [sic] got to fooling and Henry got mad at John Bell and Will Purdy tore the seat of Henry’s pants awful. He had a notion to come home but he did not.

January, Friday 23, 1880
I went to school. We spoke pieces in the afternoon. We stoped [sic] over ----about Aunt Peggie’s Courtship. I was d----- Peggie. I went to a surprise party tonight to Manroe Dickenson. Henry Dickenson took me to supper. Carrie went with George.

January, Saturday 24, 1880
I washed the breakfast dishes. Got dinner and washed them dishes. Frank and Mate  came down. Mate and Frank went down to Mrs. Bond’s this afternoon. I moped [mopped]. Ada sowed [sewed] on her quilt all day. Ed took -------- and me to Mary Baker tonight and she is the best girl that I ever seen.

January, Sunday 25, 1880
Ada got breakfast. Ma and Carrie washed the dishes. We got all ready to church this morning, but we did not go - it got so late - but we went in the evening. Mate Gittens and Jane Weaver went with us.

January, Monday 26, 1880
I went to school today. Carrie and Frankie went to Logan and got the male [sic]. She got a letter from George. She was very glad to hear from him. Mr. Mowel was buried today. I went to sleep twice in school today. Carrie washed.

January, Tuesday 27, 1880
I went to school - and it reigned [rained] all day but we went to a  ----- party up to Ezekel Mathews just the same. We had a splended [sic] time. We got home about 2 o’clock. Henry waited on Marian like a gentleman.

January, Wednesday 28, 1880
I went to school Will Rudy came home with me to stay all night. There is a spelling school to Logan tonight but I did not go. Henry, Will, Ed, and Wallace has gon [sic] and I am a-waiting for them to fetch the male [sic]. Mate is here now.

January, Thursday 29, 1880
I went to school. Henry and Stephen Seybolt went a-hunting. Will took his dinner but did not eat it. I was 10 tonight. Pa went to Watkins [Watkins Glen, NY] and Havana. Did not get home very early. Ed went to ----- to get his Democrat [probably the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle] to go to Enfield Center.

January, Friday 30, 1880
I went to school. The teacher examined all of the schoolars [sic]. I didn’t pass any, but I came pretty near in everything, but a miss is as good as a mile. Carrie washed the ruffles in my dress and put them back in.

January, Saturday 31, 1880
We went to Enfield today and when we was a-getting ready, Will, Rich and Stephen Seybolt came over and water Henry to go downtown with them. We did not go to bed till 8 o’clock Sunday morning.


A Darned Good Time

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by Miss Lucy Potter, age 13
Taylor, New York 1868
©2009 All rights reserved.



November, Sunday 1, 1868
went to meeting twice today. Abb is here tonight. I sit by the stove and Abb put his hand into my pocket and got my butternuts.

November, Monday 2, 1868
have been washing today. have not been to the post office. hain’t heard from Vel today but spose she’ll get along.



November, Tuesday 3, 1868
Lib, Line, Maria, & Oscar is here today. Is Election Day. A good ell [election] going on. have been to Clark’s 2 today.

November, Wednesday 4, 1868
have been butchering. Frank, Hut, Pritchard, Aunt Hattie, Aunt Lizzie and Abb is here to night. have got a cold.

November, Thursday 5, 1868
Julius come back today. Vel has been here. have been to the post office today. Jane has been to Pritchards. have seen Abb today.

November, Friday 6, 1868
have not been to the post office today, but have see Abb. he come down after some citrons.

November, Saturday 7, 1868
Jane and I went to the store. Abb was helping Uncle Chauncey move his building. he was driving [the] horse.

November, Sunday 8, 1868
Sophia has come today with Jerome. Abb is here tonight. I went in when i come out. i went around to them all and told them something. I kissed Abb once and he kissed me twice.

November, Monday 9, 1868
I did not sleep enough to stick in a pig’s ear. went down stairs with Abb when he went home. Sophia has gone today. Jerome went to his school. it has rained all day.

November, Tuesday 10, 1868
it has been raining all day. been Cleaning upstairs today. have not see Abb. Aunt Em has got a boy 3 months old but I can’t help it.

November, Wednesday 11, 1868
Went up to Pa’s this evening to see Aunt Lizzie & Minnie. had a good time. I saw Abb there too. I written a Letter to Em.

November, Thursday 12, 1868
I dreamt last night that Abb come home with me. have not see Abb today. Vel, Lafa, & Herbie was down here tonight.

November, Friday 13, 1868
Velma come down this evening to have me go up to Mrs. Osborn’s. I went. had a good time. went to Pa’s to stay all night. have not seen Abb tonight.

November, Saturday 14, 1868
have not been doing much today.

November, Sunday 15, 1868
went to meeting 2 today. this evening Abb is here. ---- --- -----I went in --- ------ -----there.

November, Monday 16, 1868
we washed this morning. School commenced today. went to the post office tonight.
have been to school today. like the teacher very well. Abb come home ---- -- ----yesterday.

November, Wednesday 18, 1868
have been to school today. went to the post office but did not get enything.

November, Thursday 19, 1868
went to school today. It has rained most all day. did not go to the post office.

November, Friday 20, 1868
have been to school today. Greene and Oren went to the Exhibition. Jerome come home tonight. went to the post office 3 times today.

November, Saturday 21, 1868
went to meeting 2 today. My fingers feel pretty bad. Mr. Ensign, Mrs. Ensign here tonight.

November, Sunday 22, 1868
have been to meeting twice today. Abb is here today. He looks as natural as ever.

November, Monday 23, 1868
have been to school today.

November, Tuesday 24, 1868
have been to school today. my fingers is bout the same.

November, Wednesday 25, 1868
went to Dozsten’s funrel today. Mate went down today with me afterward.

November, Thursday 26, 1868
today is Thanksgiving day and school does not keep [hours]. It rains today.

November, Friday 27, 1868
I went to school today.

November, Saturday 28, 1868
It Is kind a lonesome. I had my fingers opened today.

November, Sunday 29, 1868
have not been to meeting today but am a-going this Evening. ----- -- --- ------ ---- ----.

November, Monday 30, 1868
we washed today. I went to school.



My Centennial Diary - A Year in the Life of a Country Boy


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by Earll K. Gurnee, age 18
Skaneateles, New York 1876
©2009 ALL rights reserved.




January, Saturday 1, 1876
The morning opened dark and foggy, but not cold. Mud from 1/2 to 2-feet-deep. Toward noon the weather cleared and the balance of the day was excruciatingly fine and warm. Thermometer 60 degrees throughout the day. At 12 last night the Centennial was ushered in with ringing of bells and shouting and screeching from many voices. Many business places were illuminated. A large amount of Whiskey was probably consumed as many were hilarious and a few pugilistic. In fact, I deemed it imprudent to leave the vicinity of the store for fear of violence and consequently paid O’Grimes one dollar to stay the night.



January, Sunday 2, 1876
School commences tomorrow after a weeks vacation - which spent sawing wood. Pa plowed yesterday and I plowed day before yesterday in the big meadow.

January, Monday 3, 1876
I went to school today - had to walk for Pa plowed. Week ago today we sawed down an elm tree which measured 100 feet up to where the longest limb was 6 inches. Through it was about 4 feet through where we sawed it off and made five loggs about 12 [feet] long.

January, Tuesday 4, 1876
Attended school today - had pretty good lessons. It has frozen up and I walked to school. The roads are dreadful rough.

January, Wednesday 5, 1876
I sapose I must write something as I did not have any diary until several days of the new year had passed away. I have to “think up” what has passed and all I can remember is that I went to school. I went down to the school-house and herd the spelling “nine” practice. [Probably refers to a spelling bee played in baseball terms - as in nine players on a team.] Chauncey Clark is the champion. He is also catcher. Edd went home with F--- which made me fearful jealous.

January, Thursday 6, 1876
Examination commenced today. I was examined in Arithmetic the first thing in the morning. There were 8 examples all of them quite easy. I omitted two of them for want of more time. In the afternoon I was examined in Algebra - five questions and five examples was all that was given. I guess I answered all of them correct.

School closed at half past two.

Will Dunston’s spelling nine from Willow Glen and Edd Powells nine from our own district meet for a spelling contest tonight. I am to be “scorer.”


January, Friday 7, 1876
Examination continued today. I was examined in Grammar - do not believe I “passed.” I was also examined in Reading and Spelling. I was pronounced “excellent” which is next to the highest. 100 words were pronounced in Spelling. I returned two library books (one for myself and one for F. Powell) and got two more viz. “Seek and Find” and “ Pallace & Cottage. Edd won the prize last night although Will’s nine made a good show.. Addie Durston was “pitcher.” I scored with the aid of Charley Signor. I found it quite a job but an interesting one. Edd’s side spelled 3 words more than Will’s in eleven innings. Mr. and Mrs. Devit went up to Cram Hollar today. Emmett came down after them. Bought this diary today for 1/2 price at Wallace’s.

January, Saturday 8, 1876
Well, today has been a workday. It rained this afternoon quite smart. Pa and I put new raves and inners on the stow boat. We sawed them out of elm planks. It was quite a job. Mr. Hutson got 25 pounds of white flour today - he paid 85¢ for it. I have just finished Place & Cottage - it is a good book. I red the other one through last night. I expect to be “scorer” down to Willow Glen some time next week. It still rains at 9 o’clock.

January, Sunday 9, 1876
Today is warm but rather gloomy. I went over to Mr. Powell’s this morning. Edd paid me 40¢. The thermometer has averaged 50 degrees all day. It rained some this afternoon. I ought to write a composition tonight, but I don’t believe I shall. Tomorrow is school and I am glad of it. Po got a letter from Uncle Sylvester. Frank Powell brought it up. Uncle Sylvester’s people were all well. He enclosed $10 to pay subscription for American Agriculturalist which I must not forget tomorrow.

January, Monday 10, 1876
I----some this morning and I went to school horse-back on George. I mailed a letter for Edd P., two for Mille Clark and two for Father. Paid Wallace 50¢ and paid subscription for American Agriculturist for Uncle S.

And I was tardy in the bargain. The report for examination was read but I was not in time to hear my Grammar report.

Arithmetic   6 1/4 (perfect is 8)
Algebra 10 (“ “ 10)
Reading 7 1/2 (“ “ 8)
Spelling 84 (“ “ 100)
Grammar 4 4/10 (“ “ 10)

It is fearful cold tonight. The therm is 15 degrees. The wind is west. It snows a little. H was over this evening. The wind blind-slammed at the schoolhouse and took out 8 pains of glass.

January, Tuesday 11, 1876
Attended school as usual - the weather is pretty cold. I went a horse-back. Professor Wright whipped the boys today - one of them tripped the Prof. Up and brought him to his knees. I went down to the schoolhouse tonight and pronounced words for the “nine.” Edd had a bad cold and could not take plane enough. Handed in my composition today - subject “Hunting.” The deepest sounding is 8 3/4 miles. The greatest height ever reached by a balloon is 6 miles.

January, Wednesday 12, 1876
We thrashed our clover down at Mr. Clift’s - we had one bushel. Seward’s clover thrasher did the job. I walked to school today. It snowed about 3 inches and if the roads were smooth there would be little sleighing. I killed a muskrat tonight out west of the horse barn - he was a nice one. I went down to the schoolhouse again tonight - there were seven boys down there - we had quite a spell. I spelled 18 out of 23. Edd, Irving, Fred, Gabe, Albert and I had a splendid game of “tag” at our gate after the “spell” although it snowed hard and the wind blew strong from the west.

January, Thursday 13, 1876
I rode to school with Frank Jones. Had pretty good lessons although I did not feel very well on account of having a hard cold. Thermometer 2 degrees above zero. Rehearsed my piece to the Professor today. Went down to Willow Glen to score at the spelling match. Will Jones also scored. Will Durston won by an excess of 105 over 77. Will’s = 82, Edd’s = 77. I think it was a cooked job an am not alone in my opinion. After the match the nine on both sided spelled down. Chauncey Clark spelled the longest “Bully for Chan.”

January, Friday 13, 1876
Attended school - rode with Frank. I spoke my piece this afternoon. I returned two liberary books and got three viz “Frank in the Woods,” “Starry Flag first book” and “Outward Bound.” It snows fine tonight - had to walk home from school. We all went over to Mrs. Powell’s - had a very good visit. We went over to supper. Edd is very indignant at the way we were treated down to Willow Glen. I don’t blame him one bit. Will ought to have his ears cropped. Paid Mr. P---$1.36. 25¢ is still due him to make $1.61.

January, Saturday 15, 1876
It has been quite warm today/ Father went to the village with the stow boat and go 292 lbs of coal this forenoon. I finished “Frank in the Woods” today - it is a splendid book. We did not do hardly any work today.

Father, Mother, Rose, Mr. and Mrs. Powell, Mr. and Mrs. Spaulding all went up to Mr. Wilson’s tonight. Father drove up with the Hutson’s bobbs and carried all the visitors along. Fred came over this evening. I read “Starry Flag” through this evening - it is “strong.” It is quite warm tonight - I guess it does not freeze much. I am sorry - I am afraid it will all break up again.

January, Sunday 16, 1876
It has thawed all day, but has not stormed any. My head has ached pretty steady. I read “Outward Bound” through. I fort to write yesterday that Pa bought a bushel of turnips. News is rather scary today and I guess I shall have to shut up shop for tonight. I forgot to say that I found a silver 20¢ piece today.

January, Monday 17, 1876
I went down to school with the buggy and got to school just in time to escape being tardy. I took a lot of harness for Uncle Emmett. Aunt Hatty started for Dellaware County today on the 10:40 train. I went over to Mr. Powell’s a little while this evening and fount out that the little cluster of stars in a row high in the Southeast is Orion’s belt and the three at the right and a little below is Orion’s sword.

January, Tuesday 18, 1876
I went down to school in the sulky and had rather a wet time of it, for it rained quite considerably of and on. I took a piece up to Dodge for Edd to put in the paper about the spelling school. The thermometer stands at 54 degrees tonight and the south wind blows a gale. I went over to Mr. Powell’s a little while tonight. Got a postal card from Cousin Isaac today. The expect to come out here in about two weeks.

January, Wednesday 19, 1876
I went to school in the sulky - it was awful muddy - had pretty good lessons. It rainded like suds this afternoon. We had extemporaneous compostion tonight - there were fine subjects - I took the subject “Our Centennial” - I wrote 131 words.

A hole may be bored in a piece of glass with a three cornered file if the point of friction be kept wet with spirits of turpentine.

Nitric acid corodes on steel and it therefore used to write on steel.

January, Thursday 20, 1876
I tried it a foot today - got along first r--- it froze some last night - but not enough to hold. One of the students fired off a fire cracker in school today. Professor Wright could not find out who it was but I found out it who it was it was Wilber Lawton.

January, Friday 21, 1876
I walked to school again today - took back by liberary books today. We had Mathematical exercises today instead of Compositions. Prof made Roscoe Giles ann I stay after school and pick up all the waste paper on the floor it was not fair as we had hardly any and several other students had five times more than we. I got “Shamrock and Thistle,” “Make or Break, and “The Cruise of the Frolic.” Got a letter form Hattie - she was to start at 3 o’clock this morning and get to Albany at 7 and at Alex’s at 11 o’clock.

January, Saturday 22, 1876
It snowed some today, but not enough to make sleighing. Pa fixed my fine boots. Fred Hutson and I sawed a lot of wood. Mother put a large plaster on my back which has been very lame lately.

January, Sunday 23, 1876
It thawed today quite a little. I went over to Mr. Powell’s today and had a lot of butternuts, and a piece of pie for lunch. Was ashamed of staying so long. Frank’s butternuts made him sick. Mr. and Mrs. Powell came over here this evening. Sarah was over here a little while tonight.

January, Monday 24, 1876
Walked to school with Frank Jones - had pretty good lessons considering who studied them. Rode home with him. Durston stopped at the schoolhouse. Edd was riled up considerably and I don’t blame him after what Bill Durston put in the “Free Press” calling Edd a sore head. But Edd is a-going to give it to him in the “Democrat” this week. I’ll bet Bill will read it over more than once. By gum.

Fred H. was over here this evening a little while. I traded gloves with him, and gave him a “Dime Novel” to boot.

January, Tuesday 25, 1876
Walked to school again today - or rather part of the way and rode the rest with Edwin Clark. Had a lot of errands to do viz. Screws, glass, rubber.

I heard that Aunt Mira fell down stairs and hurt her some - but nothing serious. It snowed like everything tonight, but the thermometer is almost too high (28 degrees) for a good run of sleighing.

Frank Jones is over here after Arithmetic help in “ratios.”

Dancing School Masquerade Ball tonight.

January, Wednesday 26, 1876
Walked to school again as usual. Weather about as usual. Lecture at the academy tonight - subject “Temperance and Staid-Life in New York.” Went over to Mr. Powell’s tonight. Edd’s reply to Bill Durston in The Democrat, which I took down to Dodge, speaks well for the writer.

We almost went to Syracuse.

January, Thursday 27, 1876
It rained last night and covered everything with ice half an inch thick. Went to school in the cutter - much against my wishes. Rained also when I went to school but did not get much wet. F. Jones rode with me. Well, it thawed some all day consequently had drag home through the mud about as I expected. Saw Mrs. D--. Mira fell down the cellar stairs and blackened her eyes, hurt her shins and her back. Went over to Mr. Powell’s again tonight and collected my library books so not to forget them tomorrow. Bought some things at Wheadon’s.

January, Friday 28, 1876
I hitched George on Mr. Jones’ buggy to ride to school. Frank, of course, rode with me. Returned my library books and got there more. “Dungeon and Escape” is one of them. It rained almost all day. Fred Hutson and I went down to the Village and attended the Masquerade Ball. It was first rate. There were about 45 masked. There were several very nice costumes - both gentlemen and ladies. There were very few that I knew. Got home a few minutes after twelve.

There were 3 very nice tableaux viz “Bandits waiting for their Victim,” “The Bandit’s Death,” and I don’t know the name of the other.

January, Saturday 29, 1876
I did not get up until after seven o’clock. It was quite warm this morning, but it gradually grew colder until at dark it was frozen hard enough to hold out. Father and I cleared out the corn-house and made it a little more comfortable for the hens. Mr. Hutson got 146 lbs of hay today. My back has been very bad today. I guess I have caught cold and it has settle there. I wish if it has it would move.

January, Sunday 30, 1876
It froze up pretty solid last night. Father and Mother and Rose went over to Uncle Jonathan’s today. I stayed at home. Edd Powell came over a little while this afternoon. My eyes commenced to get sore tonight and the light hurts them.

Frank Powell got our mail today. He brought a letter from Cottage Grove. Grandma is quite sick, and she has been so for 5 months.

January, Monday 31, 1876
Did not go to school today on account of my eyes. Father went to Auburn today. The roads are rather rough. He took out seven dozen of eggs. I went over to Mr. Powell’s and from there to Mr. Spaulding. Their baby is sick - a hard cold on the lungs. Mother put on a potato poltice tonight.