Reaction #2

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?

My name is Esther Klein. I came to America in search for the "American Dream." All my life, I dreamed of making it to this wonderful land of opportunity. I had grown up listening to my elders speaking of the "Land of Dreams," where anyone and everyone had the opportunity to become successful and wealthy. I came here hoping to find all the things I was told I would find in America. I left my family and homeland in search of a happier and more prosperous life, in which I could help provide for them through my successful job in America. I even had high hopes of making enough money to move my entire family to America. Unfortunately, I was very wrong.

Little did I know I would end up in a textile mill, slaving day after day to make some wealthy man richer, while I struggled financially. It is unfair to me and my co-workers to work twelve hours or more a day at minimum wage. I rarely have a break, and if I happen to make a mistake, I will lose my job immediately. I'm stuck though, you see, because I have no choice either way. As a woman, and a poor immigrant woman at that, I have absolutely no rights. I am unable to vote, making it impossible for my voice to be heard legally. I couldn't make a difference even if I tried. My co-workers and I sometimes discuss joining a union or going on a strike to protest our poor wages and working conditions. But if we did go through with any of this, we'd most certainly lose our jobs. And then where would we go? A company is not going to hire any workers that were just fired because of striking. And due to the fact that we are women, it's going to be far more difficult to get a job than any man. We wouldn't have enough money to go back to our homeland. And we'd risk the chance of going to jail. And if we are treated poorly as foreigners already, imagine how we would be treated in jail! So as you can see, the point I'm trying to get across is that coming to America has only led me to debt, unhappiness and poverty. And the one thing I expected the most in America, that being opportunity, is what I've found the least of so far. I don't even have the opportunity to get out of this state of poverty.

In coming to America, I was unable to find a job in what I grew up doing and something I did very well farming. So I settled into the industrial life, having to live in the city. The city is a horrible, filthy place. The living quarters are crowded and unlivable. It is never quiet; the city never sleeps. There is sickness and death all around. If someone were to get sick and die, chances are everyone living with them would follow suite, just because everyone is so close they can't even breathe fresh air. The diseases are abundant and rats are a common house-pet, always somehow getting into our food sources. The place where I live should be condemned and bulldozed. We shouldn't have to live like this as immigrants.

I understand the graciousness that America bestowed upon us as Jewish immigrants. Believe me, I do have much appreciation for those who allowed me into this country. But for Heaven's sake, just because I am an immigrant does not give any American the right to use me and my other immigrant friends as a stepping stool to their success while we are left ground into the mud. We have just as much right to success as anyone else. We are truly being abused and our rights have been taken away from us.

America is no longer the “Land of Dreams” to me. I will never support that phrase again. America has done nothing but misuse desperate people that must go through desperate measures to stay alive. The government especially, has done absolutely nothing to slow down the increasing gap between the poor immigrant classes versus the rich white class. America is the now the “Land of Pain and Suffering” in all newly arrived immigrant’s eyes. And to all those misused by America, it will always keep this name.