Berkman relates her life story in the midst of her battle against deportation. Born in Poland, textile worker Edith Berkman emigrated to Cleveland in 1921 where she soon became involved in the labor and Communist movements. She did not become a citizen. Organizing textile workers and writing for the Daily Worker, comrade Berkman was active in many strikes, becoming a field organizer for the National Textile Workers Union. In 1931, Berkman was arrested during a strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts. There she was held for seven months as the federal government tried to deport her to Pilsudski’s Poland, and potential death. Berkman’s daughter was the radical filmmaker Roz Payne.

‘Undesirable’ by Edith Berkman from Working Woman. Vol. 4 No. 3. May, 1933.

I started to work at the age of 15. When I came to America in 1921, I found a job in a knitting mill in Cleveland, Ohio. In this mill I learned, the hardship of the textile workers. I worked with men and women of all nationalities, American and foreign-born. When a new method of “speed-up” was introduced, or the old machines replaced with new faster machines, it was for all of us. When wage cuts came, the wages of all workers were cut. This proved to me the need for unity of all workers, the need of a Union to stop speed-ups and wage cuts.

From Cleveland, Ohio, I moved with my family to California (The state that is keeping Tom Mooney in its dungeon for 17 years, for his loyalty to the workers.) There I joined the American Federation of Labor, and was a delegate from my union to the Central Labor Council. As a member of the A. F. of L. I learned that the A. F. of L. unions are run by highly paid officials. They sell themselves to the boss-class and always betray the working class.

I always studied and read a great deal about the struggles of working people. I followed up with great interest all the strike struggles. When the textile workers of Passaic, N.J. were on strike I helped raise funds for the strikers. In 1928 during the strike of the New Bedford textile workers, a “new union” the National Textile Workers Union was formed. This Union brought a partial victory to the workers. I made up my mind to give all my time to build this “new” textile workers union, and when after the 1929 Gastonia textile strike the leaders were framed up and arrested and the union named “The Red Union” (because it is a fighting union of the workers), I left California, went to New York, found a job in a knitting mill, and joined the “Red Union.” A few months later, the National Office of the Union asked me to go to Lawrence, Mass., to help build the Union there.

I went to Lawrence. There, I lived with a worker’s family. I visited the workers in their houses, spoke to them about the need of organization–the need of a Union. Small meetings of workers working in one mill, or one department, was held. After a few months of quiet work, a meeting of the most active union members was held and we decided to organize one mill first. We then called together 5 workers of this one mill. They talked over all the hardships in the mill. They became the organizational committee. Leaflets were then made and given out inside and outside of the mill. The workers soon began to talk about the union. We then agreed that I, as organizer of the union, speak in front of the mill. I spoke.

When the mill-owners were going to lay off some workers and double up the work on the rest, the workers organizational committee was on the job. The Union members called upon all workers to stick together and not give in to the new scheme. The workers in the hundreds joined the union. The lay-off was stopped. The N.T.W.U. became known as a fighting union and when the mill owners demanded that the women workers start to work at 6 in the morning the women joined the union, organized a strike and after two days the strike was won!

FEBRUARY STRIKE

Efficiency experts came to the Lawrence mills. With them came lay-offs and speed-up. Every day hundreds of workers found themselves in the jobless army. In February, 1931, one department of 40 workers went out on strike. In three days the National Textile Workers Union organized 10,000 workers in a sympathy strike. The strike lasted 10 days. Police, spies, priests and bankers united to break the solidarity of the strikers.

During this strike I was arrested. I was charged with the terrible crime of being a foreign-born worker who dared to give active leadership to the workers. The workers themselves came to my defense. Through the International Labor Defense my case was brought into court and I was released on bail–I went back to Lawrence. The strikers went back to work with a partial victory–the efficiency experts were taken out of the mills.

A short time after the strike, the A. F. of L. sell-out officials were brought to Lawrence by the mill-owners. This, to win the workers away from the N.T.W.U.–the “Red Union.” And a general 10% wage cut was announced. The A. F. of L.–“Yellow Unions” officials said: “These are bad times. Strikes are bad for the workers.” The workers organized in the Red Union said: “It is true that times are bad. But if there will be wage off the pay!” When the wage cut was given, 23 thousand workers went out on strike. I was again arrested.

For over two years now I have been persecuted. As a result of my treatment, I am now sick. But in Lawrence we have now not only a Union but also a Women’s Club who carry on the fight for better working conditions. In my Union work I found the women workers to be the bravest fighters against starvation. I have all hopes that the workers will force the Department of Labor to give me my freedom so that I may once again be useful.

Demand from Frances Perkins that she cancel the deportation order! She has the power to give me my freedom!

The Working Woman, ‘A Paper for Working Women, Farm Women, and Working-Class Housewives,’ was first published monthly by the Communist Party USA Central Committee Women’s Department from 1929 to 1935, continuing until 1937. It was the first official English-language paper of a Socialist or Communist Party specifically for women (there had been many independent such papers). At first a newspaper and very much an exponent of ‘Third Period’ politics, it played particular attention to Black women, long invisible in the left press. In addition, the magazine covered home-life, women’s health and women’s history, trade union and unemployment struggles, Party activities, as well poems and short stories. The newspaper became a magazine in 1933, and in late 1935 it was folded into The Woman Today which sought to compete with bourgeois women’s magazines in the Popular Front era. The Woman today published until 1937. During its run editors included Isobel Walker Soule, Elinor Curtis, and Margaret Cowl among others.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/wt/v4n03-may-1933-WW-R7524-R2.pdf