Pauline Newman stared out the New York City factory window at the East River. She could see kids her age playing in a park as she worked alongside fellow Jewish immigrant children. Their labor was dangerous and, it seemed, inescapable for poor youngsters like themselves in the early 20th century. However, Newman did escape and turned her life’s work into fighting the reality she encountered in the United States.

Born in Lithuania, she became a pioneering young activist in her adopted homeland. Leading strikes on behalf of impoverished tenants and factory workers, she helped swell the ranks of unions, while becoming an ally of national labor advocates such as Frances Perkins and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Meanwhile, she had a hidden relationship with her longtime partner and fellow labor activist, Frieda Miller, and helped Miller raise her daughter Elisabeth.

Newman’s story is back in the public eye through a new biography released on March 17, “For the Love of Labor: The Life of Pauline Newman,” penned by longtime Times of Israel contributor Cathryn J. Prince.

“So much of what she fought for, worked for, and continued to work for as she aged — if you take out the date and put in ‘2026,’ I just feel it’s so relevant to now,” Prince said.

“[Reintroducing] her now felt really timely to me,” Prince added. “So many of the issues [she fought for], child labor… safe work conditions, the role of women in the workplace, access to health care, maternity leave and family leave, all these strides were made, but there are still a lot of unresolved issues.”

As for Newman’s romantic relationship with Miller, Prince characterized it as complex in the book.

“They are really able to have this life together, raise Elisabeth, travel the world,” she told The Times of Israel. “It is really not until sometime in the ‘50s when… there is a betrayal, there is a period of estrangement, then they resume life together until Frieda dies.”

Prince noted the duo’s differences — Newman was an immigrant Jew from Lithuania with no formal education, Miller was a non-Jew from Wisconsin with a degree from the University of Chicago.

“I think that things that attracted each other, some of these differences… some of these things do grate on each other [over time],” she said.

A melting pot of assimilation

An author of multiple previous books on once-prominent historical personages who have disappeared in the public consciousness, Prince chronicled Newman’s narrative in several ways. She accessed archival documents in libraries at Cornell, Harvard and New York University — starting with internet queries to Cornell during the COVID-19 pandemic.

She also interviewed Elisabeth’s sons, Hugh and Michael........

© The Times of Israel