When the Russian Jewish girl first hears of a trade union, she has usually been some years in one of our cities, working in a factory or a sweatshop, let us say as a garment-worker. The religious and social liberty which she has here learnt to consider her due has stimulated her desire for further freedom, while the tremendous industrial pressure under which she earns her daily bread stirs the keenest resentment. One day patience, Jewish girlish patience, reaches its limit. A cut in wages, exhausting overtime, or the insults of an overbearing foreman, and an unpremeditated strike results. It may be small, poorly managed, and unsuccessful. The next time things may go better, and the girls come in touch with a union, and take their first lessons in the meaning of collective bargaining. (What is passing in the minds of the rank and file at this stage I am not certain. The obscurities of their psychology are more difficult to fathom.) But I am sure that to the leaders of the young protestants it is not so much in the light of a tower of refuge that the trade union presents itself, but rather as an instrument by means of which they believe that they can control a situation which has become unbearable. As happens to many endowed with the gift of leadership, they travel much farther than they had any idea of when they set out. As time goes on, if they are real leaders, they learn to understand human nature in its varied aspects, the human nature of bosses, as well as the human nature of their fellow-wage-earners. After a year or two as presidents or secretaries of their local, you will hear these fiery-tongued little orators preaching endurance, in order to gain an end not obtainable today, aye, even advising compromise, they to whom the very word compromise had erstwhile been impossible. This implies no loss of principle, no paltering with loyalty, but merely putting in practice the wisdom of the experienced statesman. Nearly all, sooner or later, embrace the socialist philosophy, and many are party members. In that philosophy they find a religious sanction in their most determined struggles after victory, and unfailing support and consolation in the hour of defeat.
As for the rank and file, with them, too, something of the same mental processes probably goes on in a minor degree; but they are much longer in learning their lesson, and meanwhile are often exceedingly hard to direct. They are impulsive beyond belief. It used once to be remarked that Jewish girls were the easiest of all to organize during a strike, and the hardest of all to hold in the union afterwards. This is fortunately not so true today, now that there are a few trained leaders of their own race, whom they trust, and who understand their moods, and know, better than most Americans, how to handle them.