{"id":24949,"date":"2025-11-13T17:19:02","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T17:19:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/?p=24949"},"modified":"2026-06-08T21:59:45","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T21:59:45","slug":"life-labor-and-culture-among-chicagos-jewish-immigrant-garment-workers-1880-1910","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/?p=24949","title":{"rendered":"Life, Labor, and Culture among Chicago\u2019s Jewish Immigrant Garment Workers, 1880-1910"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-getwid-tabs\" data-active-tab=\"0\"><ul class=\"wp-block-getwid-tabs__nav-links\"><\/ul>\n<div class=\"wp-block-getwid-tabs__nav-link\"><span class=\"wp-block-getwid-tabs__title-wrapper\"><a href=\"#\"><span class=\"wp-block-getwid-tabs__title\">Intro<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/div><div class=\"wp-block-getwid-tabs__tab-content-wrapper\"><div class=\"wp-block-getwid-tabs__tab-content\">\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">About this Essay<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Using the life stories of three exemplary Jewish immigrants\u2014Abraham Bisno, Philip Bregstone, and Hilda Satt Polacheck\u2014this essay explores major events and institutions that shaped Jewish immigrant life in Chicago during the turn of the twentieth century, including the Haymarket Affair, the garment industry, Maxwell Street and the Jewish \u201cghetto,\u201d Hull House, and the labor movement. In tracing these intertwined threads, it shows how Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe crafted identities as Jews, workers, Americans, and Chicagoans while contributing to the city\u2019s history, culture, and politics.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-995f960e wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\" style=\"flex-basis:33.33%\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-group is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow\">\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<h5 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Ask Students<\/h5>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\" style=\"flex-basis:66.66%\">\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Why did so many Jewish immigrants decide to leave their homes in Eastern Europe and settle in the United States beginning in the 1880s?&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>What was the Haymarket Affair of 1886, and how did Chicago\u2019s Eastern European Jewish immigrants react to it?&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>What factors led Jewish immigrants to participate in the labor movement?&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>What was Hull House, and what role did it play in the lives of Chicago\u2019s Jewish immigrants?&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>What was the Chicago \u201cghetto,\u201d and how did it shape Jewish life in Chicago?&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>What is Yiddish, and what role did it play in Jewish immigrant life?&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>What are the advantages and disadvantages of relying on first-person testimony, such as autobiography, as a form of historical evidence?&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>How can public art invite us to think more deeply about the past?&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>What parallels, if any, do you see between past immigrant cultures and present ones?&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-getwid-tabs__nav-link\"><span class=\"wp-block-getwid-tabs__title-wrapper\"><a href=\"#\"><span class=\"wp-block-getwid-tabs__title\">Essay<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/div><div class=\"wp-block-getwid-tabs__tab-content-wrapper\"><div class=\"wp-block-getwid-tabs__tab-content\">\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Contents <\/h4>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"#intro-public-memorial\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#intro-public-memorial\">Introduction: Patching a Public Memorial to Chicago\u2019s Jewish Immigrant History<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#jewish-radical-movement\">The Haymarket Affair and the Birth of Chicago\u2019s Jewish Radical Movement<\/a>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"#bisno\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#bisno\">Abraham Bisno<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#bregstone\">Philip Bregstone<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#satt-polacheck\">Hilda Satt Polacheck<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#hull-house\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#hull-house\">Hull-House: An Oasis in the Ghetto<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#hull-house-jewish-labor\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#hull-house-jewish-labor\">Hull-House and the Jewish Labor Movement<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#conclusion\">Conclusion<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"intro-public-memorial\">Introduction: Patching a Public Memorial to Chicago\u2019s Jewish Immigrant History<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignright size-large is-resized\"><a href=\"https:\/\/forward.com\/news\/468650\/a-facelift-at-40-for-a-beloved-mural-of-chicago-jewish-life\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\" noreferrer noopener\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"843\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/FabricOfOurLives-843x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Multi-colored tile mosaic depicting the lives of Jewish immigrants in Chicago in the early 20th century. At the top of the image, a woman with a protest sign lectures at a podium. On one side of her a man and a boy write and sell newspapers. On other side, a man plays a fiddle with a woman dances. Below them, women work at sewing machines, while the textile they make becomes the road of Maxwell Street. Peddlers and immigrants push carts and carry baggage down the road. Around the image is a boarder with symbols of Jewish culture, including the Start of David, menorahs, the Ten Commandments, ink wells, books, and music notes. At the bottom is the phrase &quot;From deep within my soul's despair arose a striving reaching high&quot; in English and Yiddish.\" class=\"wp-image-24020\" style=\"width:348px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/FabricOfOurLives-843x1024.jpg 843w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/FabricOfOurLives-247x300.jpg 247w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/FabricOfOurLives-768x933.jpg 768w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/FabricOfOurLives-1265x1536.jpg 1265w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/FabricOfOurLives-1686x2048.jpg 1686w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/FabricOfOurLives.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 843px) 100vw, 843px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/forward.com\/news\/468650\/a-facelift-at-40-for-a-beloved-mural-of-chicago-jewish-life\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Cynthia Weiss and Miriam Socoloff, <em>Fabric of Our Lives<\/em> at the Bernard Horwich Jewish Community Center (2022). Photo courtesy of Cynthia Weiss and Miriam Socoloff. <\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In September 2020, as the Covid-19 Pandemic raged, artists Cynthia Weiss and Miriam Socoloff met in West Rogers Park on Chicago\u2019s far North Side to <a href=\"https:\/\/forward.com\/news\/468650\/a-facelift-at-40-for-a-beloved-mural-of-chicago-jewish-life\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">restore a mural<\/a> that they had created together forty years earlier. Entitled \u201cFabric of Our Lives,\u201d the mural\u2014a colorful mosaic that depicts scenes from Chicago\u2019s Jewish history\u2014adorns an outer wall of the Bernard Horwich Community Center, one of many Jewish institutions in this part of the city. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the center of the mural\u2019s top half, a woman stands onstage behind a lectern that says, \u201cUnited Hebrew Trades,\u201d a federation of Jewish trade unions formed at the end of the nineteenth century. She holds a picket sign that reads \u201cA Living Wage for All.\u201d To her left, a paper boy in a scarf and cap holds up a Yiddish newspaper, a second tucked under his arm. Their mastheads read <em>Forverts <\/em>(<em>The Forward<\/em>) and <em>Fraye Arbeter Shtime<\/em> (<em>The Free Voice of Labor<\/em>), two influential leftwing Jewish newspapers founded during the same period. Further stage left, a writer sits at his desk, pen and paper in hand. Stage right, a woman in a blue dress and red shoes with a feather in her hair dances, while to her right a man dressed in shirtsleeves, suspenders, and a cap plays the fiddle. Together they symbolize the cultural and institutional life of Chicago\u2019s Jewish immigrants. &nbsp;<br>&nbsp;<br>Beneath the stage, on the left side of the mural\u2019s bottom half, three women bend over sewing machines. Their hunched forms contrast with the exuberant scenes above. The image reflects the prominent role of the garment industry in the experience of many Jewish immigrants to the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During these years, over two million Jews came from the Russian Empire and other parts of Eastern and Central Europe, fleeing violence, persecution, and economic hardship to make a new life for themselves in <em>Di Goldene Medine<\/em> (a Yiddish term for the United States that means \u201cthe Golden Country\u201d). Not all these Jewish immigrants worked in the clothing industry, but a large share of them did. According to economic historian Arcadius Kahan, between 1899 and 1914 garment workers comprised \u201cthe single largest occupational group in the Jewish immigration\u201d (Kahan, 106).&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Many of these workers settled in New York City, the undisputed center of the garment industry. But beginning in the 1880s, thousands of Jewish immigrants made their way to Chicago, where demand for garment workers in the city\u2019s factories and sweatshops was high. Others, meanwhile, plied different trades, working as cigar makers, slaughterhouse attendants, or builders, among other jobs. Some gained access to white-collar professions and became lawyers, doctors, dentists, pharmacists, or journalists. The flow of Jewish immigrants continued until the early 1920s, when Congress imposed restrictions on immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe that slowed their influx dramatically. Toward the mural\u2019s bottom right, a man in a coat and hat carrying baggage symbolizes the Jewish immigrant\u2019s journey.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the background of the mural\u2019s bottom section, three smaller figures surround a pushcart beneath a street sign that reads, \u201cMaxwell Street.\u201d Located on Chicago\u2019s near west side, Maxwell Street came to designate the larger enclave\u2014or \u201cghetto,\u201d as it was known\u2014where many Jewish immigrants settled upon arriving in Chicago. Street commerce of the type practiced in the <a href=\"https:\/\/encyclopedia.yivo.org\/article\/27\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>shtetlekh<\/em><\/a> (predominantly Jewish towns) of Eastern Europe flourished in Maxwell Street\u2019s environs, where many Jews worked as peddlers or street merchants, and the sounds of <a href=\"https:\/\/encyclopedia.yivo.org\/article\/235\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Yiddish<\/a>, the vernacular language of most Jews in the <em>shtetl<\/em>, filled the air. Amidst the mural\u2019s street scene, synagogues and a sign that reads \u201ckosher\u201d in Hebrew letters represent the neighborhood\u2019s strongly Jewish cultural milieu. &nbsp;<br>&nbsp;<br>At the foot of the mural\u2019s blue-and-white border, where Stars of David, menorahs, and other Jewish symbols mesh with emblems of labor and culture, such as books and bobbins, an epigraph in Yiddish and English from the poet Morris Rosenfeld proclaims: \u201cFrom deep within my soul\u2019s despair \/ Arose a striving reaching high.\u201d Rosenfeld was among the best known of the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.yiddishbookcenter.org\/language-literature-culture\/unquiet-pages-online-exhibit\/toil-and-testament-sweatshop-poets\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Sweatshop Poets<\/a>,\u201d a group of Yiddish lyricists who wrote during the turn of the twentieth century. Though their poetry was sometimes considered crude, simple, or didactic by the standards of later Yiddish writers, the Sweatshop Poets embodied the lament of the Jewish workers as well as their desire for a more just and beautiful world.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-995f960e wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/liederdesghettoa00roseuoft\/page\/32\/mode\/2up\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\" noreferrer noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"536\" height=\"710\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/External_Lieder_Des_Ghetto_op33.jpg\" alt=\"Black-and-white illustration of a Jewish immigrant textile worker bent over a sewing machine. Behind him, an industrialist depicted as a demon pulls energy and profit out of the worker through a pipe coming out of his neck.\" class=\"wp-image-24877\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/External_Lieder_Des_Ghetto_op33.jpg 536w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/External_Lieder_Des_Ghetto_op33-226x300.jpg 226w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 536px) 100vw, 536px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/liederdesghettoa00roseuoft\/page\/32\/mode\/2up\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Morris Rosenfeld, <em>Lieder des Ghettos<\/em>, illustration opposite page 33 (1902). Courtesy of the University of Toronto.<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/liederdesghettoa00roseuoft\/page\/32\/mode\/2up\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\" noreferrer noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"536\" height=\"710\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/External_Lieder_Des_Ghetto_33.jpg\" alt=\"Single page with the text of a Yiddish poem, surrounded by a black-and-white boarder with illustrations of needles, sheers, thread, tape measures, and other sewing tools.\" class=\"wp-image-24878\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/External_Lieder_Des_Ghetto_33.jpg 536w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/External_Lieder_Des_Ghetto_33-226x300.jpg 226w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 536px) 100vw, 536px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/liederdesghettoa00roseuoft\/page\/32\/mode\/2up\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Morris Rosenfeld, <em>Lieder des Ghettos<\/em>, 33 (1902). Courtesy of the University of Toronto.<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">With its title, which functions both literally and metaphorically, \u201cFabric of Our Lives\u201d suggests that Jewish labor and culture were deeply intertwined, woven together into the larger tapestry of the city\u2019s life. The mural\u2019s choice of images, <a href=\"https:\/\/anotherchicagomagazine.net\/2021\/09\/21\/i-like-to-think-that-we-were-kind-of-pioneers-an-interview-with-cynthia-weiss-and-miriam-socoloff\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Socoloff explains<\/a>,&nbsp; was partly inspired by her participation in Chutzpah, \u201ca radical Jewish organization that dealt with issues of Jewish identity, radical Jewish history, the history of Jewish labor in America, the history of Jewish political left thought in Europe, and rediscovered Jewish culture and the world that our grandparents had built coming here.\u201d The group formed during the 1970s, when numerous ethnic identity and rights movements flourished in the US. It was also a time when Chicago\u2019s Jewish population increasingly lived outside the city, reaching the terminus of its trajectory \u201cfrom shtetl to suburb,\u201d in the words of historian Irving Cutler. Seen in this context, \u201cFabric of Our Lives\u201d calls on descendants of Chicago\u2019s Eastern European Jewish immigrants to remember their working-class roots.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-995f960e wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\" style=\"flex-basis:33.33%\">\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<h5 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Learn More<\/h5>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\" style=\"flex-basis:66.66%\">\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Irving Cutler, <em>The Jews of Chicago: From Sthetl to Suburb <\/em>(1996)&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Arcadius Kahan, <em>Essays in Jewish Social and Economic History<\/em>, ed. Roger Weiss (1986)&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Tony Michels, <em>A Fire in Their Hearts: Yiddish Socialists in New York <\/em>(2009)&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Susan Roth Breitzer, \u201cJewish Labor\u2019s Second City: The Formation of a Jewish Working Class in Chicago, 1886-1928\u201d (Ph.D. Dissertation, 2007)&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"jewish-radical-movement\">The Haymarket Affair and the Birth of Chicago\u2019s Jewish Radical Movement<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Chicago\u2019s Jewish garment workers were not directly involved in the events of Haymarket, but as contemporaries they were profoundly influenced by them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The first Jews arrived in Chicago in the 1830s and 1840s and came primarily from Germany and Central Europe (Cutler, 2). They formed a small but cohesive community with a distinct cultural profile, founding synagogues in what is now the Loop and laying the foundations for Reform Judaism in the city. In the 1860s and 1870s, a small number of Eastern European Jews began to settle in Chicago, erecting their own religious institutions and often working as peddlers and small traders.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Their numbers were modest, however, when compared with the massive wave of Jewish immigration that began in the 1880s. Whereas earlier Jewish immigrants were mainly motivated by economic opportunity, these newcomers were often fleeing violence and persecution. In the Russian Empire, for example, most Jews were legally confined to the <a href=\"https:\/\/encyclopedia.yivo.org\/article\/246\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Pale of Settlement<\/a>, an area on the empire\u2019s western fringe, and anti-Jewish violence increased markedly following the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881. The tsar\u2019s death reversed the halting process of Jewish integration, accelerating Jewish migration. When these Jewish immigrants arrived in Chicago, they encountered a city in the throes of rapid industrial development, seething with class conflict.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The 1880s were a period of stunning growth for the young city. As historian Carl Smith observes, Chicago\u2019s population boomed during this decade, increasing from half a million to over a million residents. Jewish and other immigrants contributed to this rapid growth. The very forces that drew immigrants to the city\u2014opportunities to earn wages in its factories, stockyards, and workshops\u2014also produced tensions and unrest among workers who resented the long hours and low pay that characterized the industrial era (Smith, \u201cDramas of Haymarket\u201d).&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z8J4N9SW?WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\" noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"697\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99705888805867_ord_j_2617_6635_may_07_1935_pg_012_013_2-1024x697.jpg\" alt=\"Two black-and-white illustrations in an art deco style. On the left figures carrying protest signs pass other people standing in a wagon. The caption reads, &quot;The Wagon at Crane's Alley. Protest meeting against police terror, May 4, 1886.&quot; On the right is a crowd of people carrying protest signs, with messages like &quot;Our Civilization: The Bullet and Policeman's Club&quot; and &quot;Branch of the Bohem. Carpenters and Cabinet Makers Union No. 2.&quot; The caption below reads. the meeting on the Haymarket.&quot;\" class=\"wp-image-24954\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99705888805867_ord_j_2617_6635_may_07_1935_pg_012_013_2-1024x697.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99705888805867_ord_j_2617_6635_may_07_1935_pg_012_013_2-300x204.jpg 300w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99705888805867_ord_j_2617_6635_may_07_1935_pg_012_013_2-768x522.jpg 768w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99705888805867_ord_j_2617_6635_may_07_1935_pg_012_013_2-1536x1045.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99705888805867_ord_j_2617_6635_may_07_1935_pg_012_013_2-2048x1393.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z8J4N9SW?WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Mitchell Siporin, &#8220;May Day, 1886-1935&#8211;The Haymarket,&#8221; <\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z8J4N9SW?WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>New Masse<\/em>s,<\/a> detail of page 13 (May 7, 1935). Siporin (1910\u20131976) was a Jewish Social Realist painter raised in Chicago.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignright size-large is-resized\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z8J4N9SW?WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\" noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"789\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99705888805867_ord_j_2617_6635_may_07_1935_pg_012_013_1-789x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Black-and-white drawing in an art deco style of four men with nooses around their necks about to hang. The caption below reads, &quot;The hanging of Spies, Fisher, Engel and Parsons. 'There will come a time, when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strange today.' -August Spies.&quot;\" class=\"wp-image-24953\" style=\"width:289px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99705888805867_ord_j_2617_6635_may_07_1935_pg_012_013_1-789x1024.jpg 789w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99705888805867_ord_j_2617_6635_may_07_1935_pg_012_013_1-231x300.jpg 231w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99705888805867_ord_j_2617_6635_may_07_1935_pg_012_013_1-768x997.jpg 768w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99705888805867_ord_j_2617_6635_may_07_1935_pg_012_013_1-1183x1536.jpg 1183w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99705888805867_ord_j_2617_6635_may_07_1935_pg_012_013_1-1578x2048.jpg 1578w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99705888805867_ord_j_2617_6635_may_07_1935_pg_012_013_1.jpg 1607w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 789px) 100vw, 789px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z8J4N9SW?WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Mitchell Siporin, &#8220;May Day, 1886-1935&#8211;The Haymarket,&#8221; <\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z8J4N9SW?WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>New Masses<\/em>,<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z8J4N9SW?WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">detail of page 13 (May 7, 1935)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Simmering tensions boiled over in the infamous Haymarket Affair of 1886. In that year Chicago became the epicenter of a nationwide movement for an eight-hour workday. Tens of thousands of workers participated in marches and work stoppages throughout the city on May 1. Activity continued over the following days, and on May 3 a confrontation in front of the McCormick Reaper Works ended in bloodshed when police killed two workers. A meeting was called for the next day to protest the killings.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On the evening of May 4, workers gathered near Haymarket Square at Desplaines and Randolph Streets. They listened to a series of speakers, including anarchists Albert Parsons, August Spies, and Samuel Fielden. Also listening was the city\u2019s mayor, Carter H. Harrison. Satisfied that the assembly was peaceable, Harrison went home after admonishing the police to allow the meeting to conclude of its own accord. As the crowd dwindled, however, the police moved in to disperse the remaining listeners. Suddenly, a bomb arced through the air, detonating amidst the police officers. One officer was killed by the blast and dozens more were injured in the ensuing melee, some fatally. Several workers were also killed or injured (Smith, &#8220;Dramas of Haymarket&#8221;).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignright size-large is-resized\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.yiddishbookcenter.org\/collections\/yiddish-books\/spb-nybc206129\/frumkin-a-berkman-barimte-redes-fun-di-shikago-er-martirer-mit-a-forvort-fun\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\" noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"720\" height=\"960\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Barimte-redes-fun-di-shikago-martirer-edited.jpg\" alt=\"llustration from a 1933 Yiddish translation of the speeches of the Haymarket martyrs introduced by Alexander Berkman, close friend and associate of Emma Goldman. The Yiddish text reads: \u201cOur Martyrs. August Spies, Albert R. Parsons, Samuel Fielden, Michael Schwab, Geroge Engel, Adolph Fisher, Louis Lingg, and Oscar Neebe. The image in the center is the monument at their graves in Waldheim Cemetery.\u201d Ideologically opposed to the Marxist-inspired communism of the Bolshevik Party, Berkman claimed Haymarket\u2019s legacy for anarchism.\" class=\"wp-image-24956\" style=\"width:287px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Barimte-redes-fun-di-shikago-martirer-edited.jpg 720w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Barimte-redes-fun-di-shikago-martirer-edited-225x300.jpg 225w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.yiddishbookcenter.org\/collections\/yiddish-books\/spb-nybc206129\/frumkin-a-berkman-barimte-redes-fun-di-shikago-er-martirer-mit-a-forvort-fun\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">A. Frumkin and Alexander Berkman, <em>Barim\u1e6de redes fun di Shi\u1e33ago&#8217;er mar\u1e6direr mi\u1e6d a for\u1e7for\u1e6d fun Ale\u1e33sander Ber\u1e33man (Famous Speeches by the Chicago Martyrs with a Forward by Alexader Berkman)<\/em>, 4 (1933). Courtesy of the Yiddish Book Center.<\/a> <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Although the identity of the bomb thrower remains a mystery, eight anarchists were tried and convicted for murder on the theory that their words and ideas, if not their actions, had encouraged the violence. Among their defense counsel were two young Jewish attorneys\u2014Moses Salomon and Sigmund Zeisler, a recent German-speaking immigrant from Austria. One of the defendants was sentenced to fifteen years\u2019 hard labor and seven were sentenced to death. Of these, one killed himself in prison by detonating a small piece of dynamite in his mouth. Four, including August Speis, were hanged in November 1887. The other two death sentences were commuted to life in prison, and all three surviving defendants were subsequently pardoned by Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld in 1893.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As news of the events and trial swept the nation, Yiddish-speaking immigrants were among the most outspoken champions of the \u201canarchist martyrs.\u201d For example, the sweatshop poet David Edelshtat paid tribute to them in a series of Yiddish poems (Roth Breitzer, 66-67). Even as Haymarket\u2019s flame dimmed in the following decades, leftwing Jewish artists and writers strove to keep it alive. In 1933, Jewish anarchists A. Frumkin and Alexander Berkman published a Yiddish translation of speeches by the Haymarket martyrs that featured their names and images; their faces surround a photograph of the monument erected in their honor in Waldheim Cemetery. Two years later, Chicago Jewish artist and activist Mitchell Siporin published a series of Haymarket-themed illustrations in the Marxist journal&nbsp;<em>New Masses<\/em> (pictured above). Together, these images show how Jewish anarchists and communists memorialized Haymarket while also claiming its legacy for their own political philosophies.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h5 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"bisno\">Abraham Bisno<\/h5>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignright size-large is-resized\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z8J4NY92?WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\" noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"781\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/992415048805867_ord_4a_4453_frontis-e1760111814623-781x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Black-and-white profile portrait of Bisno, a middle-aged balding white man wearing a suit and tie.\" class=\"wp-image-24348\" style=\"width:245px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/992415048805867_ord_4a_4453_frontis-e1760111814623-781x1024.jpg 781w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/992415048805867_ord_4a_4453_frontis-e1760111814623-229x300.jpg 229w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/992415048805867_ord_4a_4453_frontis-e1760111814623-768x1007.jpg 768w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/992415048805867_ord_4a_4453_frontis-e1760111814623.jpg 930w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 781px) 100vw, 781px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z8J4NY92?WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Portrait from <em>Abraham Bisno, Union Pioneer<\/em> by Abraham Bisno (1967)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Members of Chicago\u2019s Jewish community were not directly involved in the events of Haymarket, but as contemporaries they were profoundly influenced by them. In 1882, four years before the Haymarket Affair, Abraham Bisno and his family arrived in Chicago among the first big wave of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. Born in 1866 near Wasilkow, Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire, Bisno was the son of a poor tailor. Life in Wasilkow and the surrounding towns was bleak; it \u201cwas one stretch of sickness, great poverty, and hard labor,\u201d Bisno recalled in his autobiography. When the young Abraham was apprenticed to a master tailor at age eleven, he was subjected to harsh beatings. Eventually, the family relocated to Kiev. When pogroms broke out in 1881, they became refugees, barely escaping the anti-Jewish violence with their lives. With the aid of the Alliance isra\u00e9lite universelle, a French organization dedicated to the welfare of Eastern European Jews, the Bisnos came to the United States, spending their first year in the South before settling in Chicago.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As immigrants experienced in textile production, the Bisnos found work in the city\u2019s rapidly expanding garment industry. At the time, much of this work was performed in the home under sweatshop conditions. While Bisno\u2019s command of English and knowledge of the trade allowed him to become a successful \u201ccontractor\u201d\u2014a worker who took home \u201cbundles\u201d of cloth from the large manufacturers and sewed them into finished garments, often by employing the labor of others\u2014his rebellious instincts and irrepressible curiosity attracted him to the labor movement. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>\u201cLabor unions were raided, broken up, their property confiscated, the police used their clubs freely. Arrests were made without any cause, and the life of the working man was not quite safe when out on strike\u201d<\/p><cite>Abraham Bisno<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bisno\u2019s participation in labor organizing brought him into contact with future Haymarket martyr August Spies, whom he heard speak one month before the fateful events of May 1886. His native Yiddish allowed Bisno to understand Spies\u2019 German speech, and the criticisms of capitalism enumerated therein set the young Bisno \u201caflame.\u201d Inspired, he joined a march of fellow Jewish cloak makers demanding better wages and working conditions on May 5. Unaware of the dramatic events that had transpired a day earlier, the marchers were brutally beaten by the police as they attempted to cross the Van Buren Street Bridge, part of the wave of repression that swept Chicago in the immediate aftermath of Haymarket. Bisno described the oppressive atmosphere in his autobiography as a state of \u201cmartial law\u201d: \u201cLabor unions were raided, broken up, their property confiscated, the police used their clubs freely. Arrests were made without any cause, and the life of the working man was not quite safe when out on strike\u201d (81). Bisno and his comrades were shaken but undeterred. They persisted in their efforts to organize, and in 1890 Bisno was elected the first president of the Chicago Cloakmakers\u2019 Union, a predecessor of the International Ladies\u2019 Garment Workers Union (Bisno, v; Carsel, 24).&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h5 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"bregstone\">Philip Bregstone<\/h5>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignright size-large is-resized\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z898KNER?BRPN=3&amp;WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\" noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"574\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/998476588805867_mms_bregstone_bx_01_fl_018_01_003-574x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Clipping of a short biography of Bregstone and an image of him, a white man with dark hair wearing a suit and tie. Text reads, &quot;Philip P. Bregstone was born 47 years ago in Poland on the German frontier. He was educated in the public schools, and then entered a Pedagogical Institute, graduating there at the age of twenty. Shortly thereafter he migrated to the United States and settled in Chicago. He began his career contributing articles to the various German and English newspapers and magazines. He matriculated at the Chicago College of Law of the Lake Forest University in 1895, and was admitted to the bar two years later. He has served as an assistant city prosecutor for four years and as assistant city attorney for two years. In January, 1911, he was appointed assistant Judge of the Probate Court of Cook County, which position he still occupies. He has the Dunne-Harrison-Lewis endorsement for Municipal Judge. He is married and the father of four children, residing at 1021 Ashland Boulevard.\" class=\"wp-image-24858\" style=\"width:277px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/998476588805867_mms_bregstone_bx_01_fl_018_01_003-574x1024.jpg 574w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/998476588805867_mms_bregstone_bx_01_fl_018_01_003-168x300.jpg 168w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/998476588805867_mms_bregstone_bx_01_fl_018_01_003-768x1371.jpg 768w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/998476588805867_mms_bregstone_bx_01_fl_018_01_003-861x1536.jpg 861w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/998476588805867_mms_bregstone_bx_01_fl_018_01_003.jpg 864w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 574px) 100vw, 574px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z898KNER?BRPN=3&amp;WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Clipping from Philip Bregstone scrapbook (ca. 1913)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Philip Bregstone (originally Bregshtein) was born the same year as Bisno\u20141866\u2014in the town of Weiwery, Lithuania (then part of Poland). He received Jewish and secular educations before immigrating to the United States in 1887 at the age of twenty. When Bregstone arrived in Chicago, the aftermath of the Haymarket drama was still playing out. In his cultural history <a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z9UG392?WS=SearchResults\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>Chicago and Its Jews<\/em>,<\/a> published in 1933, Bregstone recalled the tense atmosphere he encountered in the summer and fall of 1887. \u201cThe volcano upon which Chicago stood was seething and boiling, as if ready to explode at any moment,\u201d Bregstone wrote. \u201cEvery hour brought new and fantastic rumors. \u2026 The very air was charged with foreboding\u201d (11). Like Bisno, Bregstone was impressed by the eloquence of August Spies, whose courtroom orations captured the young Bregstone\u2019s imagination (perhaps foreshadowing his future career as a lawyer). Spies \u201churled bombs at his enemy, the capitalistic class, not made of explosive chemicals, but bombs of logic and science.\u201d The anarchist firebrand \u201cwas an orator of dynamic force and he spoke equally well in English and German\u201d (12).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignright size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1000\" height=\"570\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/nby_mms_50545_large.jpg\" alt=\"Business card reading &quot;Philip P. Bregstone, Author of Chicago and Its Jews, Suite 1505, 7 South Dearborn St.&quot;\" class=\"wp-image-24346\" style=\"width:284px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/nby_mms_50545_large.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/nby_mms_50545_large-300x171.jpg 300w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/nby_mms_50545_large-768x438.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8ZB4SZO1?WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Philip Bregstone&#8217;s business card, identifying him as the author of <em>Chicago and Its Jews<\/em> (1931-1935)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bregstone argued that Haymarket was \u201cthe forerunner of the radical movement among the Jews of Chicago.\u201d The movement began with the formation of the Jewish Workingmen\u2019s Educational Society, located at 450 South Canal Street. \u201cIt was there that the Jewish labor movement, Jewish radicalism, socialism and anarchism in this city, first saw the light of the day.\u201d The organization \u201cestablished a modest library, conducted lectures and encouraged public speaking. Its leading members were Peter Sissman, Abraham Bisno, Dr. Nahin, Dr. Knopfnagel and many whose names have passed from my memory.\u201d Bregstone himself briefly served as corresponding secretary for the Chicago Knee-Pants Makers\u2019 Union, authoring short reports for the Yiddish labor press on meetings which took place at the Jewish Workingmen\u2019s Educational Society.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignright size-large is-resized\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z890FW_V?BRPN=5&amp;WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\" noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"786\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99878548805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_h57_1990_pg_457-786x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Text reading, &quot;Peter Sissman was born in Horodishtche, Minsk province, Russia, May 1, 1868. He came to the United States December 3, 1886, arriving in Chicago a few months later, when he entered the garment trade. The working conditions of this tree were such that they fired him with two ambitions--to emancipate himself from it by studying and fitting himself for a profession, and to devote his life to bettering the lot of the laboring classes. He organized the Jewish branch of the Socialist Party in 1890 and continued actively in the party for many years. He realized his second ambition when we was admitted to the Bar and began active practice, specializing in labor litigation. Outstanding in his early practice was his defense of Rudovitch, a Lettish revolutionist whose extradition was demanded by the Russian government in 1905. The case was recognized as being a text case with far-reaching consequences. With the aid of Clarence Darrow, Sissman carried on the fight on Ruovitch's behalf to a successful conclusion. Since that time, the name of Peter Sissman has occupied an honored place in radical circles, and in association with Clarence Darrow he has handled extensie and important litigation. He was married in May 1895, to Rose Goldberg, and has two children, Jessee and Dorothy.&quot; In the corner is a black-and-white picture of Sissman, a middle-aged white man wearing a suit and tie.\" class=\"wp-image-24881\" style=\"width:229px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99878548805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_h57_1990_pg_457-786x1024.jpg 786w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99878548805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_h57_1990_pg_457-230x300.jpg 230w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99878548805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_h57_1990_pg_457-768x1000.jpg 768w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99878548805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_h57_1990_pg_457-1179x1536.jpg 1179w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99878548805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_h57_1990_pg_457.jpg 1394w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 786px) 100vw, 786px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z890FW_V?BRPN=5&amp;WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Biography of Peter Sissman in Herman Meites, <em>History of the Jews of Chicago<\/em>, 457 (1924)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In Bregstone\u2019s analysis, Jewish immigrants were drawn to the labor movement not only because of terrible working conditions but also because of their experience as a persecuted minority in Tsarist Russia. They had come to the United States to improve their economic conditions, but they also yearned to live in a free society. Indeed, many of the Jewish immigrants had been \u201cengaged in a movement to free Russia from its tyrannical autocracy and those not actively participating were in sympathy with the movement.\u201d The miscarriage of justice represented by the Haymarket trial, the execution of the martyrs, and the atmosphere of political repression \u201ccould not but disillusion them\u201d (13).&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h5 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"satt-polacheck\">Hilda Satt Polacheck<\/h5>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignright size-large is-resized\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z890FM_A?BRPN=1&amp;WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\" noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"944\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/99866858805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_p65_1989_opp_pg_080_01-1024x944.jpg\" alt=\"Black-and-white photo of Hilda Satt Polacheck using a drop spindle. She is a young white woman wearing a traditional Polish outfit.\" class=\"wp-image-24349\" style=\"width:348px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/99866858805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_p65_1989_opp_pg_080_01-1024x944.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/99866858805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_p65_1989_opp_pg_080_01-300x277.jpg 300w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/99866858805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_p65_1989_opp_pg_080_01-768x708.jpg 768w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/99866858805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_p65_1989_opp_pg_080_01-1536x1416.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/99866858805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_p65_1989_opp_pg_080_01-2048x1888.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z890FM_A?BRPN=1&amp;WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Photo of Hilda Satt Polacheck at Hull-House from <em>Hilda Satt Polacheck, I Came a Stranger: The Story of a Hull-House Girl<\/em> (1989)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hilda Satt Polacheck did not reach the Windy City until 1892, several years after Haymarket. Born Hinde Satt in <a href=\"https:\/\/encyclopedia.yivo.org\/article\/488\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Wloclawek, Poland<\/a> in 1882, her life in the old country differed markedly from Bisno\u2019s travail of abject poverty. Her father Louis was a tombstone carver whose technical skills and knowledge of multiple languages allowed him to become a prosperous artisan. In her autobiography <em>I Came a Stranger: The Story of a Hull House Girl<\/em>, Polacheck recalls an idyllic childhood spent playing on the banks of the Vistula River. Her family employed a cook, and they ate sumptuous meals on the Sabbath and other Jewish holidays. The specter of anti-Jewish violence haunted the young Hilda, but she did not experience it directly. Nevertheless, the deteriorating situation for Jews, combined with the lure of <em>Di Goldene Medine<\/em>\u2014specifically the spectacle of the 1893 World Columbian Exposition, which drew her father to Chicago\u2014persuaded Louis to uproot the family and make a new life in the United States. When Polacheck arrived in Chicago, Louis had already been in the city a year. He continued to do good business as a tombstone carver. The Satts lived in a large, well-appointed apartment in the Jewish quarter of the city on Chicago\u2019s near west side, commonly referred to as the \u201cghetto.\u201d Polacheck attended the Jewish Training School, an important educational institution in the neighborhood. In 1893, she attended the World\u2019s Fair with her father.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The good times did not last, however. Tragedy struck in March of 1894 when Louis died suddenly while at work, and the family was plunged into poverty. Polacheck had to leave school and take up work in a knitting factory. \u201cWe worked from seven thirty in the morning till six in the evening, six days a week,\u201d she recalled in her memoirs. \u201cWe had a half hour for lunch, which we ate sitting in front of the machine\u201d (57). The workplace lacked safety regulations, and workers\u2019 hands sometimes got caught in the machines. When an informer reported Polacheck to her employer for speaking at a union organizing meeting to improve working conditions, she was fired despite having devoted four years to the job. She soon found another job in a shirtwaist factory where the labor process was subdivided down to the smallest task: \u201cMy job consisted of making cuffs. So for ten hours a day I sewed cuffs. The deadly monotony\u2026was worse than the actual work\u201d (63).&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Her sudden change in fortune and loss of economic freedom framed Polacheck\u2019s reaction to the events of Haymarket, which she first learned of from famed anarchist and fellow Jewish immigrant Emma Goldman at a meeting at the West 12th Street Turner Hall in 1903. In Polacheck\u2019s telling, Goldman, an atheist, adopted a prophetic tone, and the meeting resembled a kind of anarchist Passover seder. \u201cEmma Goldman started out by telling us that she knew that everybody in the hall knew the story of the martyred comrades, but like the story of the Exodus, it had to be told each year so that \u2018we will not forget\u2019\u201d (82).&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Polacheck related the story of Haymarket to her own experience as a garment worker, identifying with the cause of the eight-hour workday for which the Haymarket martyrs died. \u201cAs I sat there listening to the recital of these events, I kept thinking of the shirtwaist factory and the hours I worked, and I could not get myself to feel that asking for the eight-hour day was a crime,\u201d she reflected. While she sympathized with the struggle for better working conditions, she \u201cwas horrified at the throwing of the bomb\u201d (83). Yet she was outraged by the fact that the Haymarket martyrs were tried for their ideas, not their actions. In an echo of Bregstone\u2019s analysis, Polacheck contrasted the treatment of the Chicago anarchists with American ideals as she understood them. Her \u201cfather had come to America \u2026 because here in this wonderful country a man was free to say what he wanted, even if he was wrong\u201d (85). The events of Haymarket and her own experiences of economic precarity and industrial servitude revealed a gap between American ideal and American reality. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-995f960e wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\" style=\"flex-basis:33.33%\">\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<h5 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Learn More<\/h5>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\" style=\"flex-basis:66.66%\">\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Carl Smith, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.chicagohistoryresources.org\/dramas\/overview\/over.htm\"><em>The Dramas of Haymarket <\/em>&nbsp;<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Abraham Bisno, <em>Abraham Bisno, Union Pioneer <\/em>(1967)&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Philip Bregstone, <a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z9UG392?WS=SearchResults\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>Chicago and Its Jews<\/em> <\/a>(1933)&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Hilda Satt Polacheck, <em>I Came a Stranger: The Story of a Hull House Girl <\/em>(1989)&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Hyman L. Meites, <em>The History of the Jews of Chicago<\/em> (1990)&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Wilfred Carsel, <em>History of the Chicago Ladies\u2019 Garment Workers\u2019 Union <\/em>(1940)&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"hull-house\">Hull-House: An Oasis in the Ghetto<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignright size-large is-resized\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8ZSWD2XB1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\" noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"763\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99923578805867_map6F-G4104.C6E2-1895-.G7-sheet-1-Wage-Map-No.1-4-763x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Detail of a map showing a set of Chicago blocks color coded by the wages of residents.\" class=\"wp-image-24957\" style=\"width:310px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99923578805867_map6F-G4104.C6E2-1895-.G7-sheet-1-Wage-Map-No.1-4-763x1024.jpg 763w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99923578805867_map6F-G4104.C6E2-1895-.G7-sheet-1-Wage-Map-No.1-4-224x300.jpg 224w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99923578805867_map6F-G4104.C6E2-1895-.G7-sheet-1-Wage-Map-No.1-4-768x1030.jpg 768w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99923578805867_map6F-G4104.C6E2-1895-.G7-sheet-1-Wage-Map-No.1-4-1145x1536.jpg 1145w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99923578805867_map6F-G4104.C6E2-1895-.G7-sheet-1-Wage-Map-No.1-4.jpg 1174w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 763px) 100vw, 763px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8ZSWD2XB1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Samuel Sewell Greeley, &#8220;Wage Map No. 1-4, Polk St. to Twelfth,&#8221; Chicago, in <em>Hull-House Maps and Papers, <\/em>detail (1895).<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Jewish immigrants were not the only residents of Chicago troubled by the gap between American ideals and the realities of their experiences. The leaders of Hull House, an example of the burgeoning settlement house movement, were also concerned by the effects of industrialization on democracy and the urban fabric. \u201cIt is not difficult to see that although America is pledged to the democratic ideal, the view of democracy has been partial, and that its best achievement thus far has been pushed along the line of the franchise,\u201d Jane Addams wrote in her 1893 essay \u201cThe Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements.\u201d&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The right to vote, while valuable, was not enough, Addams argued, if vast social disparities\u2014whether economic, racial, or national\u2014prevented people from accessing opportunities for self-cultivation and meaningful democratic participation (Sklar, 176). By bringing cultural and educational resources to Chicago\u2019s neediest neighborhoods, Addams hoped to build on democratic electoral procedures and empower the city\u2019s residents in their everyday lives. Founded in 1889 by Addams and Ellen Gates Starr and following the example of Toynbee Hall in London, Hull House was conceived as a place where the educated middle classes could live among the city\u2019s poorest residents, bridging the geographical gap that separated the classes and mending the spiritual and cultural rifts opened by urban industrial capitalism (Sklar, 172; Smith, 222).&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignright size-large is-resized\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z898DVEU?WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\" noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"706\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/992316478805867_f_6187_092_map_opp_pg_0056-scaled-e1760126268304-706x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Black-and-white map of Chicago's West Side.54\" class=\"wp-image-24854\" style=\"width:309px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/992316478805867_f_6187_092_map_opp_pg_0056-scaled-e1760126268304-706x1024.jpg 706w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/992316478805867_f_6187_092_map_opp_pg_0056-scaled-e1760126268304-207x300.jpg 207w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/992316478805867_f_6187_092_map_opp_pg_0056-scaled-e1760126268304-768x1114.jpg 768w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/992316478805867_f_6187_092_map_opp_pg_0056-scaled-e1760126268304-1059x1536.jpg 1059w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/992316478805867_f_6187_092_map_opp_pg_0056-scaled-e1760126268304.jpg 1365w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 706px) 100vw, 706px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z898DVEU?WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">&#8220;Chicago West Side&#8221; in <em>The Russian Jew in the United States<\/em> by Charles Seligman Bernheimer (1905). <\/a>This map depicts Chicago&#8217;s Near West Side, where many Eastern European Jewish immigrants settled.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hull House\u2019s location at the intersection of Polk and Halsted Streets abutted the densest area of Jewish settlement in Chicago, known as the \u201cghetto.\u201d Philip Bregstone described the value of the institution in <em><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z9UG392?WS=SearchResults\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Chicago and Its Jews<\/a><\/em>: \u201cThe influence of Hull House on the dwellers of the ghetto cannot and must not be underestimated,\u201d he insisted. \u201cThe young immigrants who thirsted for the knowledge which has been denied them in the land of the Czars, rushed to the new fountain to quench their thirst and drink to their heart&#8217;s content. The lecture halls, the library, the art galleries and all other branches for art and literature were crowded by these eager immigrants; they came to enrich their souls with everything that Hull House had to offer\u201d (18).&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe ghetto\u201d also fascinated the residents and associates of Hull House, shaping their inquiries and agenda. In <em>Hull House Maps and Papers<\/em>, a collection of investigative essays by Hull House residents published in 1895, sociologist Charles Zeublin devoted a chapter to the Chicago ghetto, describing its physical and cultural characteristics. According to Zeublin, the ghetto \u201ccomprise[d] parts of the nineteenth, seventh, and eighth wards, and is bounded by Polk Street on the north, Blue Island Avenue on the west, Fifteenth on the south, and Stewart Avenue on the east\u201d (93). Within this area lived 20,000 Jews, he reckoned. The quality of the housing was poor, although not significantly worse than the adjacent areas. Most distressing was \u201cthe deadly rear tenement,\u201d which admitted no light, was exposed to \u201cfrightful odors\u201d from the alleyway, and was \u201ctoo often the workshop of the \u2018sweater,\u2019 as well as the home of an excessive population.\u201d&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Jewish cultural atmosphere of the ghetto was unmistakable. \u201cIt is the religious distinction which every one notices,\u201d Zeublin observed; \u201cthe synagogues, the Talmud schools, the \u2018Kosher\u2019 signs on the meat-markets\u201d (94). Zeublin singled out the sweatshop as a particularly pernicious aspect of ghetto life. \u201cThe most pitiable thing about the sweat-shops in this district is the oppression of Jew by Jew,\u201d he lamented. But he also highlighted the contributions of the Jewish labor movement to ameliorating these conditions. \u201cThe chief labor organization of the Jews are the Cigarmakers\u2019 Union and the Cloakmakers\u2019 Union,\u201d he noted. \u201cWhile these organizations are taxed to keep wages above starvation level, they are composed of an unusually intelligent set of men, when their wages and hours are considered\u201d (100).&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"326\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Greeley_Nationalities_Map-1024x326.jpg\" alt=\"Map showing a set of Chicago blocks color coded by the ethnicity of residents\" class=\"wp-image-13077\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Greeley_Nationalities_Map-1024x326.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Greeley_Nationalities_Map-300x95.jpg 300w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Greeley_Nationalities_Map-scaled-600x191.jpg 600w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Greeley_Nationalities_Map-768x244.jpg 768w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Greeley_Nationalities_Map-1536x488.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Greeley_Nationalities_Map-2048x651.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8ZSWB20EO\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Samuel Sewell Greeley, &#8220;Nationalities Map No. 1-4, Polk St. to Twelfth, Chicago&#8221; in <em>Hull-House Maps and Papers<\/em> (1895). <\/a>According to Agnes Sinclair Holbrook, who contributed notes and comments on the maps, the Russian and Polish areas\u2014represented by red and red stripes respectively\u2014\u201care closely related, and uniformly Jewish.\u201d&nbsp;<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Zeublin admired the \u201cpertinacity\u201d of the Jewish population and predicted its future success so long as it discarded its \u201cconservative\u201d tendencies, which, alongside its poverty, constituted the ghetto\u2019s chief \u201cevils.\u201d Notably, Zeublin took aim at Yiddish as one force hindering Jews\u2019 ability to elevate their cultural and economic standards. For example, he lauded the quality of the theater in the ghetto, which he described as \u201ca testimony to the latent tastes of the Jew\u201d (102). However, this affinity for culture and the arts was \u201cmarred only by the regret that they are not hearing their old classic language\u201d\u2014Hebrew\u2014\u201cinstead of the frightful jargon,\u201d Yiddish (103). Likewise, Zeublin praised the synagogue as a positive \u201ceducational factor\u201d among the Jews of the ghetto but once again could not resist the urge to disparage Yiddish: \u201cthe magnificent literature of the Hebrews is there brought before the people, whose literary taste is well nigh annihilated by the frightful jargon of their daily conversation\u201d (106-7).&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Zeublin\u2019s attitude reflected a widespread anti-Yiddish prejudice that bore a dubious relationship with reality. Contrary to Zeublin\u2019s derogatory description, Philip Bregstone described Chicago\u2019s thriving Yiddish literary culture. In addition to the theater, multiple Yiddish-language newspapers represented a variety of ideological perspectives, from the more orthodox views of <em>Der Yidisher Kurier <\/em>(<a href=\"https:\/\/flps.newberry.org\/?source=daily-jewish-courier&amp;page=1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>The Daily Jewish Courier<\/em><\/a>) to the avowedly socialist <em>Yidishe Arbayter Velt <\/em>(<a href=\"https:\/\/flps.newberry.org\/?source=jewish-labor-world&amp;page=1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>Jewish Labor World<\/em><\/a>). The Yiddish publisher L.M. Shteyn set the standard for Yiddish books, producing superb volumes that were considered \u201ca jewel in every intelligent Jewish home\u201d (Michels, 149-50).&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>\u201cYiddish,&nbsp;that much maligned and still more detested language&nbsp;\u2026&nbsp;has&nbsp;\u2026&nbsp;come to&nbsp;contain&nbsp;a literature that occupies a prominent position in the literatures of the world. To this literature Jews of Chicago have contributed&nbsp;in&nbsp;all its branches.\u201d&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p><cite>Philip Bregstone<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the 1920s and 1930s, a group of Yiddish writers calling themselves <em>Yung Shikago<\/em> (Young Chicago) published an anthology of poetry and put out a flagship monthly journal, <em>Shikago<\/em>, to which Bregstone contributed substantial works of literary criticism. Bregstone himself authored a novel in Yiddish, <em>In Shturm fun Leben <\/em>(<em>In the Storm of Life<\/em>), which was published in 1924 and reviewed by distinguished Yiddish critic Shmuel Charney. While Chicago\u2019s Yiddish literary culture never achieved the scale of New York\u2019s, whose Jewish population dwarfed the Second City\u2019s, it nevertheless left a rich legacy. \u201cYiddish,\u201d Bregstone wrote, \u201cthat much maligned and still more detested language\u2026has\u2026come to contain a literature that occupies a prominent position in the literatures of the world. To this literature Jews of Chicago have contributed in all its branches\u201d (348-9).&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-995f960e wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"824\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/nby_mms_50480_full-824x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Short newspaper clipping reading, &quot;The Growth of Yiddish: Judge Philip P. Bregstone of Chicago Tells of Literature\/ 'Yiddish Literature: Its Rise, Development and Tenderness' was the subject of an address given by Judge Philip P. Bregstone at Temple Emanuel last night. The lecture was the first of a series. The speaker described the growth of Yiddish literature and told of the difference between Hebrew and Yiddish. Mr. Bregstone quoted from the founders of the Yiddish literature Abromawich, Perez and Sholen Alechem and of their sacrifices with resulted in the production of their masterpieces. A second lecture will be given by the same speaker tonight on 'New Currents in Yiddish Literature.'&quot;\" class=\"wp-image-24864\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/nby_mms_50480_full-824x1024.jpg 824w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/nby_mms_50480_full-241x300.jpg 241w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/nby_mms_50480_full-768x955.jpg 768w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/nby_mms_50480_full.jpg 1134w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 824px) 100vw, 824px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.carli.illinois.edu\/digital\/collection\/nby_mms\/id\/50480\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">&#8220;Growth of Yiddish&#8221; clipping in Philip Bregstone&#8217;s scrapbooks (ca. 1930s)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z898K8K8?WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\" noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"804\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/998476588805867_mms_bregstone_bx_02_fl_023_01_001-804x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Cover of a magazine in Yiddish. Blank except for the title at the top in bold lettering and the publisher's information in the bottom left.\" class=\"wp-image-24857\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/998476588805867_mms_bregstone_bx_02_fl_023_01_001-804x1024.jpg 804w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/998476588805867_mms_bregstone_bx_02_fl_023_01_001-236x300.jpg 236w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/998476588805867_mms_bregstone_bx_02_fl_023_01_001-768x978.jpg 768w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/998476588805867_mms_bregstone_bx_02_fl_023_01_001-1206x1536.jpg 1206w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/998476588805867_mms_bregstone_bx_02_fl_023_01_001-1608x2048.jpg 1608w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/998476588805867_mms_bregstone_bx_02_fl_023_01_001-scaled.jpg 2010w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 804px) 100vw, 804px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z898K8K8?WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Cover of <em>Shikago: Literary Monthly in Yiddish<\/em> (ca. 1932)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Zeublin\u2019s analysis of the ghetto may have had its blind spots, but it laid a foundation for subsequent investigations. In 1928, the sociologist Louis Wirth published a significantly longer, subtler, and more psychologically acute study, <em>The Ghetto<\/em>, which quoted both Zeublin and Jane Addams at length. A Jewish immigrant from Germany, Wirth was a professor at the University of Chicago, where he represented the \u201cChicago School\u201d of sociology, an approach that stressed the role of the social environment in determining human character and behavior. <em>The Ghetto<\/em> brought this approach to bear on the institution of the ghetto by placing it in social and historical context. The ghetto was both a social and spiritual condition, according to Wirth. As he stated repeatedly, the \u201cghetto is not only a physical fact; it is also a state of mind.\u201d&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Casting his eye back to antiquity and medieval Europe, Wirth saw the ghetto developing for multiple reasons, some voluntary\u2014based on freely associating Jewish communities\u2014and some involuntary\u2014based on legal persecution that confined Jews to certain areas under penalty of law. \u201cThe ghetto arose, in the first instance, out of a body of practices and needs of the Jewish population,\u201d Wirth argued. \u201cGradually it became an established institution without the Jews themselves being aware of the invisible walls that they were building around their community. Only when it became formally recognized and sanctioned by law, or, rather, decreed by law, however, did it become an object of resentment because it was a symbol of subjugation\u201d (50-1).&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-995f960e wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z8U85QO1?BRPN=7&amp;WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\" noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"668\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._194__woodcut__Maxwell_St__Chicago-668x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Black-and-white woodblock print of a crowded street lined with two-story buildings. The first story of most buildings contain shops with awnings out over the street\" class=\"wp-image-13179\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._194__woodcut__Maxwell_St__Chicago-668x1024.jpg 668w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._194__woodcut__Maxwell_St__Chicago-300x460.jpg 300w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._194__woodcut__Maxwell_St__Chicago-600x919.jpg 600w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._194__woodcut__Maxwell_St__Chicago-196x300.jpg 196w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._194__woodcut__Maxwell_St__Chicago-768x1177.jpg 768w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._194__woodcut__Maxwell_St__Chicago.jpg 979w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 668px) 100vw, 668px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z8U85QO1?BRPN=7&amp;WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Todros Geller, &#8220;Maxwell Street,&#8221; in <em>The Ghetto<\/em> by Louis Wirth, 194 (1928)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z8U85QO1?BRPN=9&amp;WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\" noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"638\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._262__woodcut__Horseradish_Grinder-638x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Black-and-white woodblock print of a man grinding horseradish in a marketplace\" class=\"wp-image-13187\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._262__woodcut__Horseradish_Grinder-638x1024.jpg 638w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._262__woodcut__Horseradish_Grinder-300x481.jpg 300w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._262__woodcut__Horseradish_Grinder-600x963.jpg 600w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._262__woodcut__Horseradish_Grinder-187x300.jpg 187w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._262__woodcut__Horseradish_Grinder-768x1232.jpg 768w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._262__woodcut__Horseradish_Grinder.jpg 935w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 638px) 100vw, 638px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z8U85QO1?BRPN=9&amp;WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Todros Geller, &#8220;Horseradish Grinder,&#8221; in <em>The Ghetto<\/em> by Louis Wirth, 262 (1928)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z8U85QO1?BRPN=5&amp;WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\" noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"657\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._153__woodcut__Street_Musicians-657x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Black-and-white woodblock print of two older white men playing music on the street. One plays a cello and the other plays a violin.\" class=\"wp-image-13178\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._153__woodcut__Street_Musicians-657x1024.jpg 657w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._153__woodcut__Street_Musicians-300x467.jpg 300w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._153__woodcut__Street_Musicians-600x935.jpg 600w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._153__woodcut__Street_Musicians-193x300.jpg 193w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._153__woodcut__Street_Musicians-768x1196.jpg 768w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._153__woodcut__Street_Musicians.jpg 963w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 657px) 100vw, 657px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z8U85QO1?BRPN=5&amp;WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Todros Geller, &#8220;Street Musicians,&#8221; in <em>The Ghett<\/em>o by Louis Wirth, 153 (1928)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Wirth viewed the modern urban ghetto as the outgrowth of its long history as something both chosen and imposed. Unlike the medieval ghetto, with its locked gates, the modern ghetto was an enclave, a \u201ccolony\u201d in the vocabulary of Hull House and others, based on ethnic and cultural affinities, such as shared customs and language. It bore the psychological scars of the legally imposed ghetto, but it existed in conditions that allowed residents to move beyond it, mainly through cultural assimilation. This process was not necessarily a smooth one. Rather, as Jews left the ghetto in search of wider horizons, antisemitism and other hardships that they encountered in the outside world often drove them back to its cramped yet familiar environment. This experience led to internal psychic conflicts that pitted their old identities as Jews against their new ones as aspiring Americans, Wirth argued. Strikingly illustrated by Chicago Jewish artist Todros Geller (whose series of woodcuts had first appeared in a 1926 book published by L.M. Shteyn) and drawing on a wealth of primary and secondary sources, Wirth\u2019s book remains a unique study that places Jewish life in Chicago in the longer arc of Jewish urban history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-995f960e wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\" style=\"flex-basis:33.33%\">\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<h5 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Learn More<\/h5>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\" style=\"flex-basis:66.66%\">\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Residents of Hull-House, <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/hullhousemapspap00newy\/page\/n5\/mode\/2up\"><em>Hull House Maps and Papers<\/em> <\/a>(1895)&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Louis Wirth, <em>The Ghetto&nbsp;<\/em>(1928)&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Charles S. Bernheimer (ed.), <em>The Russian Jew in the United States<\/em> (1905)&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Primary Source Newspaper: <\/strong>\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/flps.newberry.org\/id\/5423972_3_0770\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">A Stroll in the Chicago Sweat Shops,\u201d <em>Jewish Labor World<\/em>, 1908<\/a>&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/yiddishpublishing.wordpress.com\/chicago-3\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Decentering Yiddish Publishing: Chicago<\/a>\u201d&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"hull-house-jewish-labor\">Hull-House and the Jewish Labor Movement<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignright size-large is-resized\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8ZB45OW7?WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\" noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"801\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/nby_mms_50560_large-801x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Single page of typewriter text with quotes from major Chicago figures and Jewish leaders praising Bregstone's book.\" class=\"wp-image-24347\" style=\"width:303px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/nby_mms_50560_large-801x1024.jpg 801w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/nby_mms_50560_large-235x300.jpg 235w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/nby_mms_50560_large-768x982.jpg 768w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/nby_mms_50560_large.jpg 999w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 801px) 100vw, 801px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8ZB45OW7?WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Philip Bregstone Papers, &#8220;Opinions Expressed on &#8216;Chicago and Its Jews'&#8221; (1933-1935). <\/a>Favorable notices for Bregstone\u2019s <em>Chicago and Its Jews<\/em> by various Jewish and Chicago luminaries, including Jane Addams, the co-founder and spiritual leader of Hull House.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As Bregstone emphasized, Hull House offered a wealth of educational resources to the residents of the ghetto. His description coincides with a predominant image of Hull House as a middle-class project of \u201curban uplift.\u201d Uncharitably, it might be described as a place where well-bred Anglo-Americans could flatter themselves that they were spreading civilization among the benighted foreign slum dwellers. As Carl Smith notes, Hull House shared some characteristics with the model factory town of Pullman, where a benign paternalism was supposed to ensure social harmony (Smith, 221-3).&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The image of Hull House that emerges from the memoirs of Jewish immigrants like Abraham Bisno and Hilda Satt Polacheck, however, is of a much more radical space where the multicultural working class rubbed elbows with socialists, anarchists, and freethinkers, and engaged in spirited, even aggressive, debate. It was a place where radical solutions were not only discussed but put into practice. While aspects of Hull House\u2019s radical spirit emerged directly from its social democratic mission, its rebellious character was also shaped by the working-class immigrants of the surrounding community, especially Jewish garment workers. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For Bisno, Hull House was a revelation. \u201cMy acquaintance with Hull House was an eye-opener to me. People who did not belong to our class took an interest in our lot in life. This was very new to me,\u201d he recalled. Bisno\u2019s introduction to Hull House came via Florence Kelley, who joined the settlement in 1891. Kelley was the highly educated daughter of a US congressman who had abandoned her social privileges and embraced socialism while studying in Europe. There she became romantically involved with a Jewish medical student, Lazare Wischenewetsky, whom she married (they would later divorce due to Wischnewetsky\u2019s physically abusive behavior), and made contacts with European socialists, including Friedrich Engels, the friend and collaborator of Karl Marx. Fluent in German, Kelley wrote articles in the German social democratic press and devised grand plans to translate German socialist literature for an American audience. In 1887 she published her English translation of Engels\u2019s 1845 book, <em>The Condition of the Working Class in England<\/em>. A pathbreaking work of urban sociology, Engels\u2019s book documented and decried the living and working conditions of industrial Manchester, where the young Engels worked for his father\u2019s textile firm.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-995f960e wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z890FW_V?BRPN=3&amp;WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\" noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"701\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99878548805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_h57_1990_pg_455-1024x701.jpg\" alt=\"A black-and-white photograph of a cramped, dark room with a handful of people, mostly adults but some children. They appear to be working on textile.\" class=\"wp-image-24855\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99878548805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_h57_1990_pg_455-1024x701.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99878548805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_h57_1990_pg_455-300x205.jpg 300w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99878548805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_h57_1990_pg_455-768x526.jpg 768w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99878548805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_h57_1990_pg_455-1536x1051.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99878548805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_h57_1990_pg_455-2048x1402.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z890FW_V?BRPN=3&amp;WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Herman Meites, &#8220;A Typical Sweatshop,&#8221; in <em>History of the Jews of Chicago,<\/em> 455 (1924)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z890FW_V?BRPN=4&amp;WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\" noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"737\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99878548805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_h57_1990_pg_456-1024x737.jpg\" alt=\"Black-and-white photo of a large room with rows of people working at machines. The floor is clean, and the room has a high ceiling and large windows.\" class=\"wp-image-24856\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99878548805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_h57_1990_pg_456-1024x737.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99878548805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_h57_1990_pg_456-300x216.jpg 300w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99878548805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_h57_1990_pg_456-768x553.jpg 768w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99878548805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_h57_1990_pg_456-1536x1105.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99878548805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_h57_1990_pg_456-2048x1474.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99878548805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_h57_1990_pg_456-140x100.jpg 140w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z890FW_V?BRPN=4&amp;WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Herman Meites, &#8220;A Model Shop of To-Day, Kuppenheimer &amp; Company,&#8221; in <em>History of the Jews of Chicago,<\/em> 456 (1924)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Kelley\u2019s intellectual acumen appealed to Bisno\u2019s theoretical side. He had studied the ideas of Marx and Engels intensively in the Jewish Workingmen\u2019s Educational Society and esteemed Kelley\u2019s translation of Engels as well as her other intellectual gifts. Meanwhile, her pragmatic \u201cEnglish\u201d vision of socialism as the progressive extension of democratic, public-spirited social reforms appealed to Bisno\u2019s practical sensibilities. Bisno was also impressed by Kelley\u2019s sympathy for the plight of the Jews: \u201cThe fact that she was a Yankee and I a Jew seemed to make no difference to her. When I described the poverty, suffering, and oppression of our people, she took a great deal of interest\u201d (Bisno, 117). Kelley esteemed Bisno in turn. According to Kelley\u2019s biographer, Kathryn Kish Sklar, Bisno \u201cwas one reason why she told Engels that \u2018the most open minded workers\u2019 seemed to her \u2018the Russian Hebrew immigrants\u2019\u201d (Sklar, 221). Along with a group of Hull House residents and their allies, Kelley and Bisno led a movement to abolish sweatshop labor in the city. This reached a climax in several mass meetings at which Kelley and other affiliates of Hull House spoke to large crowds of Jewish and other workers (Bisno, 123).&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The fruit of this collaboration\u2014the 1893 Illinois Factory Act that banned child labor and enacted an eight-hour workday for women\u2014led Governor Altgeld to appoint Kelley chief factory inspector for the state. Bisno was appointed one of her deputies, a position which gave him a steady income and allowed him to study the condition of Chicago\u2019s workers firsthand. (The results of their investigations into labor conditions can be read in the series of <a href=\"https:\/\/florencekelley.northwestern.edu\/legal\/reports\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">factory reports<\/a> they submitted to the governor.)&nbsp; The work appealed to Bisno because it brought him into contact with all sorts of people. As he put it in his memoir: \u201cI loved to chum with the lowest portions of the community: tramps, drunks, prostitutes, etc.\u201d He took the work seriously. \u201cThese were years when I studied the labor problem as never before,\u201d Bisno recalled. \u201cNot from books but from actual industry\u201d (149). But when the labor law that empowered Bisno and Kelley was challenged in the State Supreme Court and a new governor less sympathetic to the cause of labor was elected in 1896, Bisno lost his position and was forced once more to seek work in the garment trade. This was often hard to come by, given his reputation as a militant strike leader. Despite this setback, his collaboration with Kelley and Hull House made a deep impression on Bisno\u2019s life and philosophy.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hilda Satt Polacheck\u2019s first substantial introduction to Hull House came via the Labor Museum. Polacheck had already been coaxed to a Hull House Christmas party when a neighborhood friend convinced her to overcome her apprehension about the event; in Poland, she had associated Christmas with anti-Jewish pogroms. But Polacheck\u2019s lifelong relationship with Hull House did not begin in earnest until \u201cone evening in 1900, after a particularly boring day at the factory, I decided to walk over to Hull-House three blocks away from where I lived. I had not been there since that eventful Christmas Party.\u201d She was greeted by Jane Addams, who guided her toward the Labor Museum, which had been founded that same year. For Polacheck, the \u201cevent marked the beginning of a new life.\u201d (63).&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>She remembered \u201chow surprised I was when I discovered that cotton grew out of the ground. I had never thought just how the cotton cloth that I worked with every day was made. I could not tear myself away from the case.\u201d <\/p><cite>Hilda Satt Polacheck on the Hull House Labor Museum<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Hull House Labor Museum exemplifies how labor and culture intertwined to shape the experience and identity of Eastern European Jewish immigrants in Chicago. In Polacheck\u2019s telling, the Labor Museum awakened her consciousness as a textile worker. Her \u201cfirst stop\u201d on her tour of the museum was a display that \u201cshowed the evolution of cotton, wool, silk, and linen.\u201d&nbsp;(64).&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignright size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"660\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99866858805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_p65_1989_opp_pg_080_02-1024x660.jpg\" alt=\"Black-and-white photograph of an elderly white woman working at a spinning wheel.\" class=\"wp-image-24962\" style=\"width:343px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99866858805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_p65_1989_opp_pg_080_02-1024x660.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99866858805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_p65_1989_opp_pg_080_02-300x194.jpg 300w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99866858805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_p65_1989_opp_pg_080_02-768x495.jpg 768w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99866858805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_p65_1989_opp_pg_080_02-1536x991.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99866858805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_p65_1989_opp_pg_080_02.jpg 2000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z890FM_A?WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Photo of an unidentified Irish woman at Hull-House from Hilda Satt Polacheck, <em>I Came a Stranger: The Story of a Hull-House Girl<\/em> (1989)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One might say that the Labor Museum helped Polacheck see through \u201ccommodity fetishism,\u201d the impression that everyday goods are autonomous objects possessing mysterious, almost magical qualities rather than the products of human-directed material processes. By learning about the science and history of textile production, Polacheck could more consciously relate to her own work in the garment factory. Indeed, this was one of the explicit goals of the Labor Museum. As Addams wrote in a 1902 report on the museum, it was intended in part to give the \u201cyoung people who earn their livings in the shops and factories \u2026 a chance to gain some idea of the material which they are constantly handling\u201d so that they \u201cmight in time become conscious of the social connection of their work.\u201d Further, by practicing crafts such as weaving in a non-commercial, non-industrial setting, immigrants like Polacheck could also partially overcome the alienation imposed by the minute division of labor in the garment trade and enjoy the craft on their own terms.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Hull House Labor Museum also served a more overt cultural function, which Polacheck described as an easing of the tensions between the immigrant children and their parents. Such children, often more \u201cAmericanized\u201d than their parents, sometimes looked down on them with shame and embarrassment because of their difficulty shedding the languages and customs of their home countries. By showcasing skills and crafts practiced by the cultures from which the immigrants of the neighborhood came, the Labor Museum helped children take pride in their parents\u2019 heritage and see them in a more sympathetic light. It also helped instill a kind of working-class pride. Polacheck recalled visiting \u201ca friend whose father was a tailor\u201d who \u201chad been attending some classes at the Labor Museum and had learned all about the making of cloth. When her father came home from work, she proudly told him what she had learned and that she was glad that her father worked with cloth\u201d (66). In Polacheck\u2019s view, the Hull House Labor Museum helped immigrants weave positive identities for themselves as members of a multicultural working-class community.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hull House also played a supporting role in several major strikes of Jewish garment workers. Perhaps the most significant of these was the \u201cuprising\u201d of 1910, which began spontaneously when Jewish factory girls employed at Hart, Schaffner, and Marx, a large Jewish-owned textile firm, walked off the job in response to a cut in piece rates, the amount workers were paid per article that they produced. A month later, in October, thousands of workers were on strike demanding better wages and conditions. As the strike dragged into the winter, Hull House and its allies came to the relief of striking workers, who needed food and medical care. In Polacheck\u2019s recollection, \u201cthey were able to collect about twenty thousand dollars, with which they set up milk stations and food stores.\u201d Hull House residents, such as Ellen Gates Starr, walked the picket lines and even tangled with police (Roth Breitzer, 53). \u201cMany doctors treated the strikers, especially those beaten by the police, without charge,\u201d Polacheck recalled. \u201cThe strike had the complete support of the socially minded people of Chicago. The chief credit of for all this good will must go to Jane Addams\u201d (120-1).&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-995f960e wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\" style=\"flex-basis:33.33%\">\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<h5 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Learn More<\/h5>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\" style=\"flex-basis:66.66%\">\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Kathryn Kish Sklar, <em>Florence Kelley and the Nation&#8217;s Work: The Rise of Women\u2019s Political Culture, 1830-1900 <\/em>(1997)&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Peter Dreier, \u201cFlorence Kelley: Pioneer of Labor Reform,\u201d <em>New Labor Forum<\/em> vol. 21 no. 1 (Winter 2012)&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>N. Sue Weiler, \u201cThe Uprising in Chicago: The Men\u2019s Garment Workers Strike, 1910-1911,\u201d in <em>A Needle, A Bobbin, A Strike: Women Needleworkers in America<\/em>, ed. Joan M. Jensen and Sue Davidson (1984)&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Susan Roth Breitzer, \u201cUneasy Alliances: Hull House, the Garment Workers Strikes, and the Jews of Chicago,\u201d <em>Indiana Magazine of History <\/em>vol. 106 no. 1 (March 2010)&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Carl Smith, <em>Urban Disorder and the Shape of Belief <\/em>(2007)&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Primary Source Newspaper:<\/strong> A <a href=\"https:\/\/flps.newberry.org\/id\/5423972_3_1081\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">retrospective on the 1910 strike<\/a> by Abraham Bisno. Bisno\u2019s description appeared in <em>Jewish Labor World<\/em> on October 13, 1916, as part of a longer series on the history of the garment industry&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"conclusion\">Conclusion<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This essay has dwelt on a specific period in Chicago\u2019s history\u2014roughly 1880-1910, with some brief forays into previous and subsequent decades\u2014focusing on the accounts of three Eastern European Jewish immigrants. As with all types of historical evidence, there are limitations and advantages to first-person accounts. People can misremember their own experiences or embellish them, and it can be difficult to generalize from individual cases. On the other hand, to understand a historical period from the perspective of those who lived it, first-person testimony is indispensable. As historian Lucy Dawidowicz writes: \u201cThe most direct form of history, autobiography is history\u2019s most intimate disclosure.\u201d&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The lives of Abraham Bisno, Philip Bregstone, and Hilda Satt Polacheck and the accounts they left behind reveal a set of characteristic experiences undergone by Jewish immigrants to Chicago, as well as a set of characteristic reactions. Their common reference points\u2014Haymarket, Hull House, the Chicago \u201cghetto,\u201d the garment industry, and the labor movement\u2014speak to the shared nature of their experience, evoking the larger collective experience of the era. Their testimonies show that Eastern European Jewish immigrants to the city did not arrive with fully formed identities, nor were they blank slates upon which the city wrote its own story. Rather, they formed themselves in interaction with Chicago as they found it, helping to shape the city\u2019s history and culture in turn.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">About the Author<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ben Schacht is a public humanist and independent scholar. He is a board member and program chair of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.chicagoyivo.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Chicago YIVO Society<\/a>, an affiliate of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-getwid-tabs__nav-link\"><span class=\"wp-block-getwid-tabs__title-wrapper\"><a href=\"#\"><span class=\"wp-block-getwid-tabs__title\">Source Set<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/div><div class=\"wp-block-getwid-tabs__tab-content-wrapper\"><div class=\"wp-block-getwid-tabs__tab-content\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-995f960e wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\" style=\"flex-basis:33.33%\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/forward.com\/news\/468650\/a-facelift-at-40-for-a-beloved-mural-of-chicago-jewish-life\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\" noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"843\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/FabricOfOurLives-843x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Multi-colored tile mosaic depicting the lives of Jewish immigrants in Chicago in the early 20th century. At the top of the image, a woman with a protest sign lectures at a podium. On one side of her a man and a boy write and sell newspapers. On other side, a man plays a fiddle with a woman dances. Below them, women work at sewing machines, while the textile they make becomes the road of Maxwell Street. Peddlers and immigrants push carts and carry baggage down the road. Around the image is a boarder with symbols of Jewish culture, including the Start of David, menorahs, the Ten Commandments, ink wells, books, and music notes. At the bottom is the phrase &quot;From deep within my soul's despair arose a striving reaching high&quot; in English and Yiddish.\" class=\"wp-image-24020\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/FabricOfOurLives-843x1024.jpg 843w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/FabricOfOurLives-247x300.jpg 247w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/FabricOfOurLives-768x933.jpg 768w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/FabricOfOurLives-1265x1536.jpg 1265w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/FabricOfOurLives-1686x2048.jpg 1686w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/FabricOfOurLives.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 843px) 100vw, 843px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/forward.com\/news\/468650\/a-facelift-at-40-for-a-beloved-mural-of-chicago-jewish-life\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Cynthia Weiss and Miriam Socoloff, <em>Fabric of Our Lives <\/em>at the Bernard Horwich Jewish Community Center (2022). Photo courtesy of Cynthia Weiss and Miriam Socoloff. <\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\" style=\"flex-basis:66.66%\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Fabric of Our Lives, <\/em>a mural on Chicago&#8217;s North Side by Cynthia Weiss and Miriam Socoloff, lays out some of the intertwined threads that shaped Chicago&#8217;s Jewish community in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Its images depict the rich&nbsp;cultural and institutional&nbsp;life&nbsp;of Chicago\u2019s Jewish immigrants, the difficult conditions many of them faced in Chicago, and the ways they fought to improve the city. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Three Voices<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This essay weaves together the experiences of three Jewish immigrants to Chicago who left behind substantial accounts of their lives and times \u2013 Abraham Bisno, Philip&nbsp;Bregstone, and Hilda Satt Polacheck \u2013 and the ways they interacted with key events and issues of their time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-995f960e wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"781\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/992415048805867_ord_4a_4453_frontis-e1760111814623-781x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Black-and-white profile portrait of Bisno, a middle-aged balding white man wearing a suit and tie.\" class=\"wp-image-24348\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/992415048805867_ord_4a_4453_frontis-e1760111814623-781x1024.jpg 781w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/992415048805867_ord_4a_4453_frontis-e1760111814623-229x300.jpg 229w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/992415048805867_ord_4a_4453_frontis-e1760111814623-768x1007.jpg 768w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/992415048805867_ord_4a_4453_frontis-e1760111814623.jpg 930w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 781px) 100vw, 781px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z8J4NY92?WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Portrait from<em> Abraham Bisno, Union Pioneer<\/em> by Abraham Bisno (1967)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z898KNER?BRPN=3&amp;WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\" noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"574\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/998476588805867_mms_bregstone_bx_01_fl_018_01_003-574x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Clipping of a short biography of Bregstone and an image of him, a white man with dark hair wearing a suit and tie. Text reads, &quot;Philip P. Bregstone was born 47 years ago in Poland on the German frontier. He was educated in the public schools, and then entered a Pedagogical Institute, graduating there at the age of twenty. Shortly thereafter he migrated to the United States and settled in Chicago. He began his career contributing articles to the various German and English newspapers and magazines. He matriculated at the Chicago College of Law of the Lake Forest University in 1895, and was admitted to the bar two years later. He has served as an assistant city prosecutor for four years and as assistant city attorney for two years. In January, 1911, he was appointed assistant Judge of the Probate Court of Cook County, which position he still occupies. He has the Dunne-Harrison-Lewis endorsement for Municipal Judge. He is married and the father of four children, residing at 1021 Ashland Boulevard.\" class=\"wp-image-24858\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/998476588805867_mms_bregstone_bx_01_fl_018_01_003-574x1024.jpg 574w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/998476588805867_mms_bregstone_bx_01_fl_018_01_003-168x300.jpg 168w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/998476588805867_mms_bregstone_bx_01_fl_018_01_003-768x1371.jpg 768w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/998476588805867_mms_bregstone_bx_01_fl_018_01_003-861x1536.jpg 861w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/998476588805867_mms_bregstone_bx_01_fl_018_01_003.jpg 864w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 574px) 100vw, 574px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z898KNER?BRPN=3&amp;WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Clipping from Philip Bregstone scrapbook (ca. 1934)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z890FM_A?WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\" noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"944\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/99866858805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_p65_1989_opp_pg_080_01-1024x944.jpg\" alt=\"Black-and-white photo of Hilda Satt Polacheck using a drop spindle. She is a young white woman wearing a traditional Polish outfit.\" class=\"wp-image-24349\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/99866858805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_p65_1989_opp_pg_080_01-1024x944.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/99866858805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_p65_1989_opp_pg_080_01-300x277.jpg 300w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/99866858805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_p65_1989_opp_pg_080_01-768x708.jpg 768w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/99866858805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_p65_1989_opp_pg_080_01-1536x1416.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/99866858805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_p65_1989_opp_pg_080_01-2048x1888.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z890FM_A?WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Photo of Hilda Satt Polacheck at Hull-House from Hilda Satt Polacheck, <em>I Came a Stranger: The Story of a Hull-House Girl <\/em>(1989)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Haymarket and the Birth of Chicago&#8217;s Jewish Radical Movement<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Members of&nbsp;Chicago\u2019s Jewish community were&nbsp;not directly involved in the events of Haymarket,&nbsp;but&nbsp;they were&nbsp;profoundly influenced by them.&nbsp;Bisno, Bregstone, and Polacheck all saw Haymarket as related to subsequent Jewish labor activism. The images here show some of the ways that Jewish activists and artists connected faith, culture, and politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The first image is an illustration from Morris Rosenfeld&#8217;s <em>Lieder des Ghettos <\/em>and shows a wealthy industrialist in the guise of a demon feeding off a Jewish garment worker. The second is an illustration from a 1933 Yiddish translation of the speeches of the Haymarket martyrs introduced by Alexander Berkman, close friend and associate of Emma Goldman. The Yiddish text reads: \u201cOur Martyrs. August Spies, Albert R. Parsons, Samuel Fielden, Michael Schwab, Geroge Engel, Adolph Fisher, Louis Lingg, and Oscar Neebe. The image in the center is the monument at their graves in Waldheim Cemetery.\u201d Ideologically opposed to the Marxist-inspired communism of the Bolshevik Party, Berkman claimed Haymarket\u2019s legacy for anarchism. Last are illustrations of Haymarket by Mitchell Siporin, a Jewish Social Realist painter raised in Chicago, for the Marxist magazine <em>New Masses<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-995f960e wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/liederdesghettoa00roseuoft\/page\/32\/mode\/2up\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\" noreferrer noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"536\" height=\"710\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/External_Lieder_Des_Ghetto_op33.jpg\" alt=\"Black-and-white illustration of a Jewish immigrant textile worker bent over a sewing machine. Behind him, an industrialist depicted as a demon pulls energy and profit out of the worker through a pipe coming out of his neck.\" class=\"wp-image-24877\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/External_Lieder_Des_Ghetto_op33.jpg 536w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/External_Lieder_Des_Ghetto_op33-226x300.jpg 226w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 536px) 100vw, 536px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/liederdesghettoa00roseuoft\/page\/32\/mode\/2up\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Morris Rosenfeld,<em> Lieder des Ghettos<\/em>, illustration opposite page 33 (1902). Courtesy of the University of Toronto.<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.yiddishbookcenter.org\/collections\/yiddish-books\/spb-nybc206129\/frumkin-a-berkman-barimte-redes-fun-di-shikago-er-martirer-mit-a-forvort-fun\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\" noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"720\" height=\"960\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Barimte-redes-fun-di-shikago-martirer-edited.jpg\" alt=\"llustration from a 1933 Yiddish translation of the speeches of the Haymarket martyrs introduced by Alexander Berkman, close friend and associate of Emma Goldman. The Yiddish text reads: \u201cOur Martyrs. August Spies, Albert R. Parsons, Samuel Fielden, Michael Schwab, Geroge Engel, Adolph Fisher, Louis Lingg, and Oscar Neebe. The image in the center is the monument at their graves in Waldheim Cemetery.\u201d Ideologically opposed to the Marxist-inspired communism of the Bolshevik Party, Berkman claimed Haymarket\u2019s legacy for anarchism.\" class=\"wp-image-24956\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Barimte-redes-fun-di-shikago-martirer-edited.jpg 720w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Barimte-redes-fun-di-shikago-martirer-edited-225x300.jpg 225w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.yiddishbookcenter.org\/collections\/yiddish-books\/spb-nybc206129\/frumkin-a-berkman-barimte-redes-fun-di-shikago-er-martirer-mit-a-forvort-fun\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">A. Frumkin and Alexander Berkman, <em>Barim\u1e6de redes fun di Shi\u1e33ago&#8217;er mar\u1e6direr mi\u1e6d a for\u1e7for\u1e6d fun Ale\u1e33sander Ber\u1e33man (Famous Speeches by the Chicago Martyrs with a Forward by Alexader Berkman),<\/em> 4 (1933). Courtesy of the Yiddish Book Center.<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z8J4N9SW?WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\" noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"674\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/99705888805867_ord_j_2617_6635_may_07_1935_pg_012_013-1024x674.jpg\" alt=\"Two-page text of black-and-white illustrations depicting the Haymarket protest, bombing, trial, and execution of the accused perpetrators, all done in a blocky, 1930s illustration style.\" class=\"wp-image-24345\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/99705888805867_ord_j_2617_6635_may_07_1935_pg_012_013-1024x674.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/99705888805867_ord_j_2617_6635_may_07_1935_pg_012_013-300x197.jpg 300w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/99705888805867_ord_j_2617_6635_may_07_1935_pg_012_013-768x505.jpg 768w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/99705888805867_ord_j_2617_6635_may_07_1935_pg_012_013-1536x1011.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/99705888805867_ord_j_2617_6635_may_07_1935_pg_012_013.jpg 2000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z8J4N9SW?WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Mitchell Siporin, &#8220;May Day, 1886-1935&#8211;The Haymarket,&#8221; <em>New Masses<\/em>, 12-13  (May 7, 1935)<\/a>. Siporin (1910\u20131976) was a Jewish Social Realist painter raised in Chicago.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Chicago&#8217;s Jewish &#8220;Ghetto&#8221;<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">These sources depict Chicago&#8217;s densest Jewish neighborhoods. Some, by sociologists and activists, use data and maps to quantify the area. In contrast, Todros Geller&#8217;s woodcuts show the people and culture of the area. The settlement house Hull House, on the edge of the neighborhood, provided community, resources, and a site for community activism. The textile exhibit in its Labor Museum deepened Polacheck&#8217;s knowledge of, and respect for, the labor performed by Chicago\u2019s immigrant workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-995f960e wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8ZSWD2XB1\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"323\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Greeley_Wage_Map-1024x323.jpg\" alt=\"Map showing a set of Chicago blocks color coded by wage rate\" class=\"wp-image-13091\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Greeley_Wage_Map-1024x323.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Greeley_Wage_Map-300x95.jpg 300w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Greeley_Wage_Map-scaled-600x189.jpg 600w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Greeley_Wage_Map-768x242.jpg 768w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Greeley_Wage_Map-1536x484.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Greeley_Wage_Map-2048x645.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8ZSWD2XB1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Samuel Sewell Greeley, <em>Wage Map No. 1-4, Polk St. to Twelfth,<\/em> Chicago (1895) <\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8ZSWB20EO\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\" noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"326\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Greeley_Nationalities_Map-1024x326.jpg\" alt=\"Map showing a set of Chicago blocks color coded by the ethnicity of residents\" class=\"wp-image-13077\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Greeley_Nationalities_Map-1024x326.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Greeley_Nationalities_Map-300x95.jpg 300w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Greeley_Nationalities_Map-scaled-600x191.jpg 600w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Greeley_Nationalities_Map-768x244.jpg 768w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Greeley_Nationalities_Map-1536x488.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Greeley_Nationalities_Map-2048x651.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8ZSWB20EO\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Samuel Sewell Greeley, <em>Nationalities Map No. 1-4, Polk St. to Twelfth<\/em>, Chicago (1895) <\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-995f960e wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z898DVEU?WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\" noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"706\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/992316478805867_f_6187_092_map_opp_pg_0056-scaled-e1760126268304-706x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Black-and-white map of Chicago's West Side.54\" class=\"wp-image-24854\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/992316478805867_f_6187_092_map_opp_pg_0056-scaled-e1760126268304-706x1024.jpg 706w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/992316478805867_f_6187_092_map_opp_pg_0056-scaled-e1760126268304-207x300.jpg 207w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/992316478805867_f_6187_092_map_opp_pg_0056-scaled-e1760126268304-768x1114.jpg 768w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/992316478805867_f_6187_092_map_opp_pg_0056-scaled-e1760126268304-1059x1536.jpg 1059w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/992316478805867_f_6187_092_map_opp_pg_0056-scaled-e1760126268304.jpg 1365w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 706px) 100vw, 706px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z898DVEU?WS=AssetManagement\">&#8220;Chicago West Side&#8221; in<em> The Russian Jew in the United States<\/em> by Charles Seligman Bernheimer (1905)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z8U85QO1?BRPN=9&amp;WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\" noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"638\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._262__woodcut__Horseradish_Grinder-638x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Black-and-white woodblock print of a man grinding horseradish in a marketplace\" class=\"wp-image-13187\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._262__woodcut__Horseradish_Grinder-638x1024.jpg 638w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._262__woodcut__Horseradish_Grinder-300x481.jpg 300w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._262__woodcut__Horseradish_Grinder-600x963.jpg 600w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._262__woodcut__Horseradish_Grinder-187x300.jpg 187w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._262__woodcut__Horseradish_Grinder-768x1232.jpg 768w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._262__woodcut__Horseradish_Grinder.jpg 935w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 638px) 100vw, 638px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z8U85QO1?BRPN=9&amp;WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Todros Geller, &#8220;Horseradish Grinder,&#8221; in <em>The Ghetto<\/em> by Louis Wirth, 262 (1928)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z8U85QO1?BRPN=7&amp;WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\" noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"668\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._194__woodcut__Maxwell_St__Chicago-668x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Black-and-white woodblock print of a crowded street lined with two-story buildings. The first story of most buildings contain shops with awnings out over the street\" class=\"wp-image-13179\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._194__woodcut__Maxwell_St__Chicago-668x1024.jpg 668w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._194__woodcut__Maxwell_St__Chicago-300x460.jpg 300w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._194__woodcut__Maxwell_St__Chicago-600x919.jpg 600w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._194__woodcut__Maxwell_St__Chicago-196x300.jpg 196w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._194__woodcut__Maxwell_St__Chicago-768x1177.jpg 768w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._194__woodcut__Maxwell_St__Chicago.jpg 979w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 668px) 100vw, 668px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z8U85QO1?BRPN=7&amp;WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Todros Geller, &#8220;Maxwell Street,&#8221; in <em>The Ghetto<\/em> by Louis Wirth, 194 (1928)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-995f960e wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z8U85QO1?BRPN=5&amp;WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\" noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"657\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._153__woodcut__Street_Musicians-657x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Black-and-white woodblock print of two older white men playing music on the street. One plays a cello and the other plays a violin.\" class=\"wp-image-13178\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._153__woodcut__Street_Musicians-657x1024.jpg 657w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._153__woodcut__Street_Musicians-300x467.jpg 300w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._153__woodcut__Street_Musicians-600x935.jpg 600w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._153__woodcut__Street_Musicians-193x300.jpg 193w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._153__woodcut__Street_Musicians-768x1196.jpg 768w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._153__woodcut__Street_Musicians.jpg 963w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 657px) 100vw, 657px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z8U85QO1?BRPN=5&amp;WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Todros Geller, &#8220;Street Musicians,&#8221; in <em>The Ghetto<\/em> by Louis Wirth, 153 (1928)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z8U85QO1?BRPN=1&amp;WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\" noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"700\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._28__woodcut__Talmudic_student-700x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Black-and-white woodblock portrait of an orthodox Jewish man from the shoulders up.\" class=\"wp-image-13177\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._28__woodcut__Talmudic_student-700x1024.jpg 700w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._28__woodcut__Talmudic_student-300x439.jpg 300w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._28__woodcut__Talmudic_student-600x878.jpg 600w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._28__woodcut__Talmudic_student-205x300.jpg 205w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._28__woodcut__Talmudic_student-768x1124.jpg 768w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/F_616_.978__The_Ghetto__pg._28__woodcut__Talmudic_student.jpg 1025w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z8U85QO1?BRPN=1&amp;WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Todros Geller, &#8220;Talmudic Student,&#8221; in <em>The Ghetto <\/em>by Louis Wirth, 28 (1928)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z890FM_A?WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\" noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"660\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99866858805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_p65_1989_opp_pg_080_02-1024x660.jpg\" alt=\"Black-and-white photograph of an elderly white woman working at a spinning wheel.\" class=\"wp-image-24962\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99866858805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_p65_1989_opp_pg_080_02-1024x660.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99866858805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_p65_1989_opp_pg_080_02-300x194.jpg 300w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99866858805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_p65_1989_opp_pg_080_02-768x495.jpg 768w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99866858805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_p65_1989_opp_pg_080_02-1536x991.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99866858805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_p65_1989_opp_pg_080_02.jpg 2000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z890FM_A?WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Photo of an unidentified Irish woman at Hull-House from Hilda Satt Polacheck,<em> I Came a Stranger: The Story of a Hull-House Girl<\/em> (1989)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Literary Culture and Labor Activism<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Starting in the early 1900s, Jewish Chicagoans began documenting and celebrating their experiences in Chicago. Bregstone&#8217;s 1933<em>Chicago and Its Jews: A Cultural History <\/em>was one of the first important histories of Chicago&#8217;s Jewish community. Bregstone was also a prominent member of Chicago&#8217;s Yiddish literary scene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-995f960e wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z898K8K8?WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\" noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"804\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/998476588805867_mms_bregstone_bx_02_fl_023_01_001-804x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Cover of a magazine in Yiddish. Blank except for the title at the top in bold lettering and the publisher's information in the bottom left.\" class=\"wp-image-24857\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/998476588805867_mms_bregstone_bx_02_fl_023_01_001-804x1024.jpg 804w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/998476588805867_mms_bregstone_bx_02_fl_023_01_001-236x300.jpg 236w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/998476588805867_mms_bregstone_bx_02_fl_023_01_001-768x978.jpg 768w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/998476588805867_mms_bregstone_bx_02_fl_023_01_001-1206x1536.jpg 1206w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/998476588805867_mms_bregstone_bx_02_fl_023_01_001-1608x2048.jpg 1608w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/998476588805867_mms_bregstone_bx_02_fl_023_01_001-scaled.jpg 2010w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 804px) 100vw, 804px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z898K8K8?WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Cover of <em>Shikago: Literary Monthly in Yiddish<\/em> (ca. 1932)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.carli.illinois.edu\/digital\/collection\/nby_mms\/id\/50480\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\" noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"824\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/nby_mms_50480_full-824x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Short newspaper clipping reading, &quot;The Growth of Yiddish: Judge Philip P. Bregstone of Chicago Tells of Literature\/ 'Yiddish Literature: Its Rise, Development and Tenderness' was the subject of an address given by Judge Philip P. Bregstone at Temple Emanuel last night. The lecture was the first of a series. The speaker described the growth of Yiddish literature and told of the difference between Hebrew and Yiddish. Mr. Bregstone quoted from the founders of the Yiddish literature Abromawich, Perez and Sholen Alechem and of their sacrifices with resulted in the production of their masterpieces. A second lecture will be given by the same speaker tonight on 'New Currents in Yiddish Literature.'&quot;\" class=\"wp-image-24864\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/nby_mms_50480_full-824x1024.jpg 824w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/nby_mms_50480_full-241x300.jpg 241w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/nby_mms_50480_full-768x955.jpg 768w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/nby_mms_50480_full.jpg 1134w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 824px) 100vw, 824px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.carli.illinois.edu\/digital\/collection\/nby_mms\/id\/50480\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">&#8220;Growth of Yiddish&#8221; clipping in Philip Bregstone&#8217;s scrapbooks (ca. 1930s)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8ZB45OW7?WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\" noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"801\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/nby_mms_50560_large-801x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Single page of typewriter text with quotes from major Chicago figures and Jewish leaders praising Bregstone's book.\" class=\"wp-image-24347\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/nby_mms_50560_large-801x1024.jpg 801w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/nby_mms_50560_large-235x300.jpg 235w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/nby_mms_50560_large-768x982.jpg 768w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/nby_mms_50560_large.jpg 999w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 801px) 100vw, 801px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8ZB45OW7?WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Philip Bregstone Papers, &#8220;Opinions Expressed on &#8216;Chicago and Its Jews'&#8221; (1933-1935)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-995f960e wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1000\" height=\"570\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/nby_mms_50545_large.jpg\" alt=\"Business card reading &quot;Philip P. Bregstone, Author of Chicago and Its Jews, Suite 1505, 7 South Dearborn St.&quot;\" class=\"wp-image-24346\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/nby_mms_50545_large.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/nby_mms_50545_large-300x171.jpg 300w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/nby_mms_50545_large-768x438.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8ZB4SZO1?WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Philip Bregstone&#8217;s business card (1931-1935)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z890FW_V?BRPN=3&amp;WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\" noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"701\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99878548805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_h57_1990_pg_455-1024x701.jpg\" alt=\"A black-and-white photograph of a cramped, dark room with a handful of people, mostly adults but some children. They appear to be working on textile.\" class=\"wp-image-24855\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99878548805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_h57_1990_pg_455-1024x701.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99878548805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_h57_1990_pg_455-300x205.jpg 300w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99878548805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_h57_1990_pg_455-768x526.jpg 768w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99878548805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_h57_1990_pg_455-1536x1051.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99878548805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_h57_1990_pg_455-2048x1402.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z890FW_V?BRPN=3&amp;WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Herman Meites, &#8220;A Typical Sweatshop,&#8221; in <em>History of the Jews of Chicago<\/em>, 455 (1924)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"737\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99878548805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_h57_1990_pg_456-1024x737.jpg\" alt=\"Black-and-white photo of a large room with rows of people working at machines. The floor is clean, and the room has a high ceiling and large windows.\" class=\"wp-image-24856\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99878548805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_h57_1990_pg_456-1024x737.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99878548805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_h57_1990_pg_456-300x216.jpg 300w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99878548805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_h57_1990_pg_456-768x553.jpg 768w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99878548805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_h57_1990_pg_456-1536x1105.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99878548805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_h57_1990_pg_456-2048x1474.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99878548805867_ord_f_548_9_j5_h57_1990_pg_456-140x100.jpg 140w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collections.newberry.org\/asset-management\/2KXJ8Z890FW_V?BRPN=4&amp;WS=AssetManagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Herman Meites, &#8220;A Model Shop of To-Day, Kuppenheimer &amp; Company,&#8221; in <em>History of the Jews of Chicago<\/em>, 456 (1924)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-getwid-tabs__nav-link\"><span class=\"wp-block-getwid-tabs__title-wrapper\"><a href=\"#\"><span class=\"wp-block-getwid-tabs__title\">Related Resources<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/div><div class=\"wp-block-getwid-tabs__tab-content-wrapper\"><div class=\"wp-block-getwid-tabs__tab-content\">\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Related Lessons<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-995f960e wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/?p=17805\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\" noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"578\" height=\"659\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/HullHouse.png\" alt=\"Lesson: Hull House lesson thumbnail\" class=\"wp-image-22205\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/HullHouse.png 578w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/HullHouse-263x300.png 263w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/HullHouse-300x342.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 578px) 100vw, 578px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/?p=17805\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Hull House Neighborhood <\/a><\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/?p=17805\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">by Hilary Mac Austin and Kathleen Thompson<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/?p=21294\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\" noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"583\" height=\"611\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/PopGrowth.png\" alt=\"Population Growth in Chicago thumbnail\" class=\"wp-image-22206\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/PopGrowth.png 583w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/PopGrowth-286x300.png 286w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/PopGrowth-300x314.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 583px) 100vw, 583px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/?p=21294\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>Population Growth in Chicago <\/strong><br>by Kathleen Thompson<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Related Collection Essays<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-995f960e wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"535\" height=\"748\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Faith-in-the-City_Thumbnail2.png\" alt=\"Thumbnail of essay &quot;Faith in the City: Religion and Urban Life in Chicago, 1870-1920&quot;\" class=\"wp-image-24987\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Faith-in-the-City_Thumbnail2.png 535w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Faith-in-the-City_Thumbnail2-215x300.png 215w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 535px) 100vw, 535px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/?p=14499\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>Faith in the City: Religion and Urban Life in Chicago, <\/strong><\/a><br><a href=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/?p=14499\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>1870-1920 <br><\/strong>by Christopher D. Cantwell and Daniel Greene<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/?p=14384\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\" noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"525\" height=\"665\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/JungleAndCommunity_Thumbnail.png\" alt=\"Thumbnail of the collection essay &quot;The Jungle and the Community: Workers and Reformers in Turn-of-the Century Chicago&quot;\" class=\"wp-image-24981\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/JungleAndCommunity_Thumbnail.png 525w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/JungleAndCommunity_Thumbnail-237x300.png 237w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 525px) 100vw, 525px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/?p=14384\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Jungle and the Community: Workers and Reformers in Turn-of-the Century Chicago <br><\/a><\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/?p=14384\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">by Dr. John Hawkins with Hana Layson and James R. Barrett<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/?p=14492\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\" noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"564\" height=\"677\" src=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Left-Wing-Radicalism_Thumbnail.png\" alt=\"Thumbnail for the essay &quot;Left-Wing Political Radicalism in Chicago, 1880-1960&quot;\" class=\"wp-image-24983\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Left-Wing-Radicalism_Thumbnail.png 564w, https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Left-Wing-Radicalism_Thumbnail-250x300.png 250w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 564px) 100vw, 564px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/?p=14492\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Left-Wing Political Radicalism in Chicago, 1880-1960 <br><\/a><\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/?p=14492\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">by Hana Layson with David Krugler, revised by Dr. Sebastian Wuepper<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":24991,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[83,84,164],"tags":[169,173],"class_list":["post-24949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-19th-century","category-20th-century","category-collection-essays","tag-chicago-midwest","tag-immigration-migration"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/998476588805867_mms_bregstone_bx_02_fl_023_01_001.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24949"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25306,"href":"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24949\/revisions\/25306"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dcc.newberry.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}