Reaction #2 - Esther Klein

It’s 1892 and you, Esther Klein, are a 17-year-old textile mill worker in the American northeast. You are new to the country and to industrial work, having worked previously on your parents’ farm in the old country. As much as you longed to come to America, your life as a poor Jewish industrial worker in the United States makes you have second thoughts. And life at the mill—why you and some of the other girls dream of organizing and standing up to the mill owners, but what you’ve seen of other labor organizing worries you! So tell me, Esther, what are the sources of your dissatisfaction as a poor woman, a worker, and a Jewish immigrant? Why have your dreams, of what life in America would be, changed?


As a young immigrant textile mill worker I am learning the American Dream is not what I thought it would be like when I was back home. We were told of a great country with opportunity for everyone. A country where we could live together and make a name for ourselves in a great utopia. Unfortunately those stories have not come true. I thought I would be glad to leave the old country and the farm, but those long days out on the farm seem like nothing compared to these horrible conditions in these cramped and stuffy buildings.

The girls at the factory agree that there is no reason to force us to work in such horrible conditions and we have thought about fighting for our rights, but we fear that we will merely be thrown out and replaced by others that won’t argue the working conditions or low wages. We are working in dangerous conditions and any complaints we make are ignored and there is nobody we can go to. We work endlessly and tirelessly, toiling over their textiles and getting paid pennies while the owners and managers benefit from our hard work and live luxurious lives.

We are forced to work because our families would not be able to survive without our extra income even as small as it is. Our little brothers and sisters have small jobs like us and are treated horribly and taken advantage of even more then I and the others. We work long hours, are given little to eat, and get in trouble for anything we do wrong.

The government will not even come to aid us in our complaints. I feel as if the companies have paid off the government and bought off our rights. The liberties we were promised and the utopia we imagined has not come true. We work hard to give our family a fighting chance in America but the sad truth is many of us fail in our endeavors. We come to America to fulfill the American dream but instead are used by others to better their own lives. Our dream has been transformed into a fight for our survival. Instead of bettering our lives from the old country, we come here and are fighting for the bare minimum necessities.