The first Jewish “radicals” — most of them Socialists or Anarchists — who arrived from Russia in the 1880s played an important role in the development of the Jewish labor movement in America. They launched a broad campaign of agitation and propaganda among the Jewish working masses, which eventually led to a real transformation of Jewish life. It was those “radicals” who enlightened the unsophisticated minds of Jewish workers and who kindled in them a burning desire for a better, finer life. That was why they organized Jewish workers into unions and taught them how to struggle for their human rights.
Most of the radicals from Russia were former students or graduates of the gymnazium.20 A good number of those educated young people came from Lithuania. But the vast majority came from South Russia right after the pogroms that took place in a number of Russian cities.
Most of those educated people were quite young and there were only a few middle-aged or elderly people among them. A number of them had belonged to a variety of secret revolutionary circles in Russia and
19 This was the Jewish Workers’ Association, formed in 1885, which superseded the Russian Workingman’s Union, the Russian Labor Lyceum, and the Russian-Jewish Workers’ Association.
20 Russian and Polish: secondary school.
a few of them had even belonged to that famous revolutionary party, Narodnaya volya.21 Others only sympathized with revolutionary or Socialist movements, but many were already familiar with Socialist literature from their country of origin.
A number of those young people were children from rich Jewish families. Almost all of them spoke Russian among themselves. When they came to America they socialized with each other, and when they attended their rallies or those of the workers’ unions in the early years they also spoke Russian exclusively.
As I related in Fertsig yor in der yidisher arbeter bavegung, in the summer of 1882 I was fortunate to get to know one of those radicals, Abraham Cahan, who is now editor of the Forverts.22 I first met him in July at the cigar factory of Moishe Stachelberg on West Broadway, where we were both working. I learned that my new friend came from Vilna, that he was a former teacher, and that he had participated in the revolutionary movement back home. When the Russian police had come to arrest him, he escaped from Russia and made his way to Brody in Galicia.
At that time most Jews fleeing Russia for America passed through Brody. Thousands of them left that year (1882) because of the pogroms and persecution by the Tsarist regime. They went to Brody, and the Jewish Committee helped them get to America. In Brody Abraham Cahan joined the Am olam branch from Kiev. Am olam was a Jewish organization of educated, idealistic young men and women, which had been founded in Odessa in 1881 right after the first pogroms. Its members decided to leave Russia with the aim of starting communal farming colonies in America.23 They wished, in addition, to prove that Jews were not a nation of swindlers, as the anti-Semites claimed, but could live from their own toil as honest workers.
Cahan had joined Am olam in Brody, but when he reached America he realized that their plan to establish communal colonies here was not practical. That was why he decided to stay in New York finding employment in a cigar factory, which was where I met him. I had heard
21 Russian: The People’s Will, a revolutionary organization created in 1879 to overthrow the Tsar.
22 Yiddish: Forward, founded in 1897.
23 Am olam colonies were started in Louisiana, South Dakota, and Oregon.
about Socialists in my home town, Odessa, at the age of sixteen, but I did not know what Socialism was or what Socialists wanted. When I found out that my workmate Cahan was a Socialist, I asked him to explain this theory to me and Cahan did so gladly. We talked at length. He taught me about the revolutionary struggle in Russia, about the heroic martyrs of the revolutionary movement, and about the basic principles of Socialism. His influence turned me into an enthusiastic supporter of Socialist ideals.
Cahan told me that he would be leaving the factory soon as he had found a job as a teacher at a night school of English for Jewish immigrants.
However before doing so he was planning to call a meeting where they would be discussing Socialism. As he knew that I was sympathetic, that I knew a lot of immigrants and mixed well with people, he asked for my help with printing a leaflet announcing the meeting. He also asked me and my friends to distribute the leaflets to immigrants in their homes and places where they congregated. I promised that I would. A few weeks later, Cahan came back to the shop and we went off to a printer to order five hundred leaflets printed in Yiddish.
Many of the Jewish immigrants of 1882 who were living downtown, as well as those still quartered in Castle Garden, were interested in radical movements. A group of Jewish Socialists visited the German-language Volkszeitung, the only Socialist newspaper in New York at the time, which had been founded in 1878. Its editor then was the very able Socialist speaker and editor, Sergei Schevitsch, a Russian from an aristocratic family of Baltic origin. His wife was the well-known Countess Helene von Racowitza, on whose account Ferdinand Lassalle had been killed in a duel.
The Russian-Jewish Socialists held that first meeting in New York on July 27, 1882 in the Golden Rule Hall at 125 Rivington Street, on an extremely hot Friday evening. Yet the heat wasn’t a deterrent and the five-hundred capacity hall was full. Many had been awaiting the meeting with excitement as they were eagerly anticipating the pleasure of their first taste of “free speech”. Besides the young radicals, there were men and women, some of them elderly, who had been living in New York for quite a while, and did not understand Russian. The meeting had been announced in the Volkszeitung, but most of the audience had learned of it from the leaflets that we had distributed.
The chairman of that historic meeting was A. Mirovich,24 a former student at the University of St Petersburg, who was inclined toward anarchism. He opened the meeting in Russian and explained that the subject of the meeting would be: “Socialism and the Recent Pogroms against Jews in Russia”. He introduced the first speaker, Schevitsch, editor of the Volkszeitung. Schevitsch spoke in Russian, and all those who could understand the language paid close attention to his talk and he inspired them all. He was one of the most electrifying speakers and lecturers in America.
Born an aristocrat, he had left Russia to study in Germany where he had taken part in the Social Democratic movement,25 before coming to America with his wife. He first worked here as a tramway conductor, and became active in the Socialist and labor movements that had been started by German immigrants. He later edited the Volkszeitung together with Alexander Jonas, another educated Socialist who was to play a vital role in the American labor movement and was beloved by the Jewish working masses.26 Those two, Schevitsch and Jonas, were the star speakers for the Socialist movement. Schevitsch would deliver his speeches in English, German, Russian, French, and Italian. That made him immensely popular with the workers of various nationalities in New York.
At that first Jewish Socialist meeting, two speakers, Nelke and Kaiser, spoke in German. When they had ended, the chairman invited the audience to ask questions. A few minutes passed, and no one said anything. Finally someone standing near me raised his hand. Everyone turned to look and saw a very young man with a pale face. No one besides his townsmen and shipmates knew him. As he made his way to the stage some in the audience said sarcastically, “God only knows what this kid is going to say!” But how surprised they were when they heard him speak. Everyone was mesmerized and the audience applauded when he had finished. A circle gathered around the young speaker.
And that young man was none other than my friend Abraham Cahan.
24 Mirovich had been a supporter of Narodnaya volya in Russia.
25 The Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, founded in 1875.
26 Alexander Jonas was a founder of the Socialist Labor Party, its candidate for mayor in the New York election of 1886, and a prominent supporter of the Jewish labor movement.
Turning to the chairman, Mirovich, who was standing in the circle, Cahan remarked that speeches in Russian would be of little usefulness, since the vast majority of the Jewish immigrant masses would not understand them. He believed, therefore, that it would be worthwhile for Socialist propaganda to be delivered in the mother tongue of the workers, in plain Yiddish.
Some of the intelligentsia who were there erupted in laughter. The suggestion was just insane! “What? Propaganda in Yiddish? Where will you find propagandists in Yiddish?” Mirovich asked Cahan, “Would you be willing to give a talk in Yiddish?” “Of course!” he answered.
And it was decided right then to organize a second meeting to be held in the humble mother tongue. The Jewish Socialists and anarchists had organized the Propaganda Verein,27 and that Verein called for a second meeting to be held later that year.
That second meeting, at which Cahan gave the first speech on Socialism in Yiddish, took place on 6th Street in a hall where the German anarchists used to meet.28 It was so crowded with Russian-Jewish immigrants that it was almost impossible for the speakers to get to the stage. The workers listened very attentively to Cahan’s talk. He spoke in clear, plain, colorful Yiddish that everyone understood perfectly well.
Cahan explained the principles of Socialism with simple examples from daily life. It is difficult to convey adequately the powerful impression that Cahan’s speech made on those early Jewish immigrants in New York. Many of them felt as though they had been blind all their lives and suddenly a bright light had opened up their eyes. Many asked him questions, which he answered clearly. His account of the heroic struggle of the Russian revolutionaries and of the martyrdom of Zhelyabov, Perovskaya, Kybalchych, Hessia Helfmann29 and others who had been
27 Its full name in English was the Propaganda Association for the Dissemination of Socialist Ideals Among the Immigrant Jews. It had been started by Aleinikoff and Mirovich whose immediate reason for starting the Propaganda Verein was to deter Jewish immigrants from being strike-breakers.
28 This meeting on August 18, 1882 was held in the back room of a beer hall at 625 E, 6th Street.
29 Andrei Zhalyabov, Sophia Perovskaya, Mykolay Kybalchych, and Hessia Helfmann (Gesia Gelfmann) were members of Narodnaya volya. Hessia Helfmann was sentenced to death, but her sentence was commuted. She died the following year after giving birth in prison.
executed shortly after the assassination of the Russian Tsar Alexander II moved many in the audience to tears.
That first Propaganda Verein lasted only a short time.30 But Abraham Cahan remained very popular among the Jewish immigrants. Cahan was asked to be the main speaker whenever there was a meeting of Jewish workers, be it the Tailors’ Union, the Typesetters’ Union, the Cloak Makers’ Union, or the Cigarette Makers’ Union. His speeches always inspired great enthusiasm among the workers. It would not be an exaggeration to say that many of the immigrants thought of him as their Messiah, who was helping to free them from the terrible exploitation and oppression that they were suffering in the sweatshops.
I can remember often going to find him at home, or waiting for him at one of the Jewish bookstores on Ludlow Street that he used to frequent, to invite him to a mass meeting of the tailors and cloak makers that I had heard about on the street. In those years the Jewish tailors and cloak makers used to meet on Hester Street, Essex Street, and Ludlow Street, in the area that we used to call “the Pig Market”. That was where I would hear that the sewing-machine operators and the pressers were about to form a union, and when Abraham Cahan showed up there would be thunderous applause. Cahan would give them a really good speech in such a simple Yiddish that even the most unsophisticated workers understood him.
The Russian Workers’ Association31 was started in 1884. One of the founders was the late Nikolai Aleinikoff, the leader of the Kiev Am olam group, with whom Cahan had sailed to New York. I myself belonged to that association, and I recall that some of the other members were Abraham Kaspe; Solomon Menaker; Grigory Weinstein (a townsman from Vilna), a typesetter who became a member of New York’s English-language Typographical Union almost as soon as he landed in America;
Leon Malkiel, who would later be a prominent activist in the Socialist Party; and many others whom I don’t remember. A Russian immigrant named Viktor Jarros32 would often come down to meetings from Boston, and he later became a well-known American journalist. The aim of
30 1882–1884.
31 This was the Soiuz russkikh rabochikh (Union of Russian Workers) organized by Bernard Weinstein, Nicholas Aleinikoff, Leon Malkiel and others.
32 Originally Viktor Jaroslavsky.
that association was self-education, and its members planned to start cooperative workshops. The “radicals” of the day viewed the association as a “conservative” organization. Nevertheless large numbers of radical Jewish workers would come to its lectures, even those who could not understand Russian well. People with a wide variety of viewpoints would take part in the debates after the talks.
I remember that a year later, in 1885, there was a heated debate at a lecture of the Russian Workers’ Association between the “conservative”
and “radical” members. One of the radicals, whose leader was Abraham Cahan, announced that a new organization had been started, called the Russian Labor Lyceum, and that starting the following Sunday, it would hold lectures every Sunday at 165 East Broadway, a well-known hall where Jewish immigrants held large meetings. Cahan announced that Socialist lectures would be given in Russian and German. Cahan and Louis Miller were the founding members of the Labor Lyceum.
Miller had been in the United States only a short time. He was one of the most active members of the Russian Labor Lyceum right from its inception. I knew him well, because he had been a founder of the first Shirt Makers’ Union. Though still a young man, he struck me as an unusually gifted speaker and leader. He had come from Vilna province, and had left his wealthy parents at age fifteen to go to Switzerland. That was where he became a Socialist. But even as a child he had heard about Socialism from his older brother, Leon Bandes, who had been a member of Zundelevich’s revolutionary cell in Vilna, which Abraham Cahan later joined.33
Miller had come to New York from Switzerland in 1884. He went to work in the shirt trade, and soon earned a reputation as one of the best shirt “front-makers”. He was bright and educated, and a born orator.
At first he made speeches in Russian, then later switched to Yiddish, and was a founder of the first Shirt Makers’ Union. He was a popular lecturer and a brilliant debater, and was considered for years to be one of the ablest leaders of the Jewish labor movement in America. He was a founder of the first Yiddish Socialist paper in America, the Arbeter
33 Aaron Zundelevich was a member of the Russian revolutionary group Zemlya i volya (Land and Liberty), which was founded in 1876 and was later renamed Narodnaya volya.
tsaytung,34 and later, of the newspaper, Forverts.35 But in 1905 he left the movement and started his own Yiddish newspaper, Varhayt.36 His newspaper later opposed the Socialists in the trade union movement, which he had himself helped to found and build. He died in 1927.
Alexander Jonas gave the first lecture at the Russian Labor Lyceum, and it made quite an impression on the audience. Jonas spoke in such a clear, simple German that almost all the Jewish immigrants there could understand every word. He clearly explained the basic ideas of scientific Socialism. Another frequent speaker at the Lyceum was Dr Merkin, a Ph.D. in chemistry, a former yeshiva37 student from Dvinsk. He had left the yeshiva at age fifteen and had gone to study in Germany, where he became a Social-Democrat. Dr Merkin was in his late thirties, and he spoke in German that was mixed with Lithuanian Yiddish. He spoke Russian with a Talmudic sing-song. But his lectures were extremely informative and scholarly. He spoke poetically, which enchanted the audience. It was really something to hear!
I later had the opportunity to get closer to him, and often visited him in the tiny room that he rented in a private house, in a beautiful neighborhood on 15th Street near a park. We became friends and he loved to hear about everything that was going on with the immigrants, because he kept himself at a distance from them. He was a bit of a “crank”, as we used to call him. But he was really a warm-hearted person, very sympathetic to the terrible conditions of the Jewish workers and to their black despair. Since he could not find work as a chemist, he went to work as a dishwasher in a large American restaurant on Broadway. He stayed here only a few years, then returned to Germany. But in that short time he did much to educate the Jewish immigrants of New York. In 1907 we received a letter from him in Germany. He was impoverished and sick, and in dire circumstances. Naturally we did what we could to help him out a bit. About a year later we learned from the German Socialist newspapers that Dr Merkin had died.
34 Yiddish: The Workers’ Newspaper, founded by the Socialist Labor Party and the United Hebrew Trades, first came out on March 7, 1890.
35 Yiddish: Forward.
36 Yiddish: Truth.
37 Hebrew and Yiddish: traditional religious secondary school.
In 1884 or 1885 a group of Jewish radical immigrants started a cooperative laundry on Essex Street. Among them were Dr Paul Kaplan38 and Niuma Gretsch, both members of Am olam. The laundry ran on a cooperative basis, and lasted several years, but intense competition from privately-owned laundries eventually forced them out of business. Another group of radicals started the Russian-Jewish Workers’ Association in 1884,39 to present Socialist lectures in Yiddish.
When they couldn’t get Yiddish speakers, the Association would invite German Socialists to speak in German. They held lectures every Friday night at 68 ½ Orchard Street.
The founders of the Association were two brothers, Mitia and Niuma Gretsch, former students at the University of Odessa. Mitia, the elder of
The founders of the Association were two brothers, Mitia and Niuma Gretsch, former students at the University of Odessa. Mitia, the elder of