Grace Hutchins (August 19, 1885 – July 15, 1969) was an American labor reformer and researcher, journalist, political activist and communist. She spent many years of her life writing about labor and economics, in addition to being a lifelong dedicated member of the Communist Party, along with Anna Rochester, a Marxist economist and historian and her companion of 45 years. Together they were known for promoting radical Christian pacifism in the United States, although Hutchins was also regularly involved in strikes, demonstrations and labor disputes.
Background
Grace Hutchins was born in an upper-class family in Boston in 1885, the third daughter of five children to Susan (née Barnes-Hurd) and Edward Hutchins. Her ancestors, originally from England, had settled in Massachusetts during the colonial period. Her father was an attorney who helped found the Legal Aid Society, while her mother was involved in various hospitals in the city; they were both actively involved in the Episcopal Trinity Church.
Hutchins was privately educated, and accompanied her parents on a world tour from 1898 to 1899. She then attended the women's college at Bryn Mawr, which was relatively new at the time. During her college life, she "excelled" in basketball, field hockey, and tennis. Outside of sports, she was also involved in advocating for women's suffrage. She graduated in 1907, and remained in touch with her classmates later in life.
Career
Academics
Within a few years of leaving college, Hutchins became an Episcopalian missionary teacher for Church Missionary Society in China and taught at St. Hilda's school in South China in 1912, later becoming a headmistress. During her time in China, she kept a diary on her observations of Chinese women's social, educational, and medical conditions. During her stay in China, Hutchins became ill and returned to the United States in 1916, partially due to parental concerns. Back in the United States, she was employed by a social training school.
Activism
In response to the ongoing Great War, Hutchins took an anti-interventionist position and began shifting toward socialism in her political stance. When the US entered the war with the Allies in 1917, she found herself in protests against the war. Her political stance impacted her private life, and nearly led to her dismissal from the school where she was employed.
Living in New York, Hutchins met Anna Rochester in 1919 at an annual retreat when she joined the Society of the Companions of the Holy Cross through her involvement with teaching the New Testament. Both Rochester and Hutchins were firm adherents to the doctrine of nonviolence, and in 1920 Hutchins joined the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), which promoted pacifism in the United States. She became a secretary and public speaker for the organization. She served as a press secretary from 1924 to 1926, during which time she also served as a business executive while actively contributing to the monthly magazine.
From 1920 to 1921, she studied labor issues at the New York School of Social Work, and then went on to Columbia University's Teacher College for the following two years. It was during this period that she was suggested to have "learned firsthand" on many women's labor conditions by working "ten-hour days in a cigar factory".
The Companions' reading lists for their annual retreats revolved around the works of Christian socialists such as Walter Rauschenbusch and Edward Carpenter, and Hutchins also read more traditional writers such Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. One contemporary influence appears to have been Vida Scudder. Her career was focused upon the health and welfare of working class women and children. According to Janet Lee, author of a biography about the two women, they "were a part of [a] cohort of women whose commitment to social activism was integrated with their lesbian orientation".