[inaudible conversations] good evening, everyone and welcome to politics and prose. my name is matthew zipf part of the events team. each year we host close to 1,000 offer1,000authors across the the locations here at union market. if you would like a full list of the upcoming events please see the website, politics-prose.com or you can pick up a copy of the calendar at the desk. before the event tonight, i have a few short housekeeping items. first please silence your cell phone so they don't have any buzzing or ringing during the event. when it's time for the session after the presentation, please come up to the microphone as we are recording via audio. please also make sure your question is in fact a question. if you have a dissertation, we do have a self-publishing arm.

[laughter] we will have a signing up at the front of the table after the event. if you do not yet have a copy we have plenty available for sale at the register at the front of the store. finally at the end of the event, please hold off your chair and that will be a great help to the staffers. today i am excited to welcome adam hochschild to disposable writing his book rebel cinderella. it tells the story of rose pastor stokes famous in america during the gilded age but largely forgotten now. having arrived in 1890 and working in factories since age 11 she astonished the society by marrying a blue blooded new york millionaire. together the couple joined the socialist party and worked with

figures. as with his previous work on the spanish civil war and abolition of some committee keep an eye on contemporary life even as he guided the past. without ever dissolving into the near present, he examines how historical figures responded to challenges but in some ways resemble our own and revising figures about the political response ability of citizens and also invites us to widen our political imagination. once again, his other books include the classic that shows not only his thoroughness of the historian but also his mastery of the narrative writer. in this account of his life and work he's given us an important detail for our own time. please join me in welcoming adam hochschild. [applause]

♪ >> that music was supposed to be playing as you come in. [laughter] but i've got to stop it now because we've got to get on with the rest of the show. anyway. it's great to be back here at politics and prose, a wonderful store and if i lived in washington, i would be here loitering all the time. it is a pleasure to see so many of you here to read about a book that isn't the latest story from the trump white house and isn't even about the coronavirus but rather about something else entirely and also about her very unusual marriage, which i think sheds some light on the country as it was a century and a quarter ago and maybe by reflection in the country today.

so i want to tell the story of the people but let me start with her. the in the town in 1879 this is a small city that today is in the far northeastern corner but there was no poland is a part of the czarist russia. and although she was jewish, some of them didn't live because her father lived above his shop on the main square town. when she was born the russian empire was under the rule of

alexander the second. he was the man that freed them and also used delete cookies a few of the restrictions imposed by no means an enforcer of the rights that was the shower we say a little bit less anti-semitic than other members of the dynasty. however others were offended by something that happened two years after she was born hundreds of miles away in st. petersburg. a as soon as he was dead, his successor imposed restrictions and encouraged quietly but unofficially a series over the

next 25 years. hundreds of people were killed, often jewish homes and shops were burned leaving their owners homeless and this of course was what spurred the enormous exodus from the russian empire going from western europe and then for most of them on to the united states and among them was rose then 3-years-old and her divorced mother. the state first for seven years in london living in great poverty is in the city's east end, and it was there that she had the only school when sh in d received less than two years but it was enough to read and write english and a choir love of english poetry. then in 1890 when she was 11-years-old, and her mother came to the united states like

so many others and they immediately settled in cleveland ohio. the air at the age of 11, she had to go to work right away in a factory making cigars. that is her in the middle of the back row age 16 in each 96. she worked for a dozen years and by the end of that time was the sole supporter of herself, her mother and six younger siblings who have been abandoned by their stepfather. she worked not only days lef ond and evenings as well and earned $8 a week, the equivalent of about 240 today. working in cigar factories was

not easy. the legal in the tobacco leaves seat into your clothes and skin and other surfaces you were working on a. it was impossible to get rid of the snow. smell. in order to not have heat drying out the tobacco leaves the air had to be kept very humid so the windows were nailed shut in the summertime celebrities wouldn't blow the humidity out. very fine tobacco dust filled the air and the belongings of the people working there. workers had the highest rate of tuberculosis in the united states. only stonecutters had worse. she would hav would have long pr the rest of her life. when she was 21-years-old, something happened that changed the course of her life.

she saw a copy of a newspaper published in new york in the jewish daily news. the paper ran one page in english and invited contributions from those around the country. a new york paper trying to go -- also ialso accept everybody wher you are sayin sending your stord write us letters. rose began writing to the paperr and they gave her a column, advice column under the heading is just between ourselves. she was amazed when she received a check in the mail for $2 to learn that you could actually get paid for writing. she wrote under the name zelda and was even more amazed after two years of doing this is paper invited her to write for the

english page of the paper full-time at double the salary she was earning as a cigar worker. so, she arrived in new york in 1903 at the age of 23. and imagine how the city looked to somebody then seeing it for the first time on elevated tracks of the street. below ground thousands were working building a subway system that hadn't opened yet and on the streets even a few of the new horseless carriages. and of course skyscrapers unlike anything she had ever seen before.

more than half the men in manhattan were foreign-born. new york would soon be the largest city in the world. it was already the largest jewish city in the world. this is a picture of the lower east side where rose lived and worked. most of the people she wrote about for the newspaper were shop assistants and street peddlers like this. she gathered her stories and wrote copies every day but one day in the summer of 1903, the editor gave her a different assignment which was to go and interview somebody who worked in a settlement house. you know what settlement house ihouseswork i think.

these were places that were established in poor neighborhoods, usually the poorest neighborhoods of every city throughout the northeast. they offered nutrition for families, baths and showers not just for kids but for adults because for millions of people living in event in new york and other cities there were not busy and showers there. they offered adult literacy classes and classes i and many other things as well. although settlement houses observed a petition that was almost a in tigerlily emigrant d very poor, the volunteers staffed these houses tended to be well-to-do college graduates. eleanor roosevelt for example worked in a settlement house on

the upper east side of new york. the house where rose was sent to do her interview with the university settlement on the lower east side not very far from her newspaper's office and here is the man she was asked to interview, a volunteer working there, james graham phelps stokes. his friends called him grandm gm and they fell in love. they came from a different background imaginable. here is his parents summer home. the house and the brookshire mountains of massachusetts and at the time that it was built in the 1890s, it was for a time the largest project home in the united states. 100 rooms. legend has it one of his

brothers in the class of 1896 i0 give it to send a telegram that they were bringing some of those home for the weekend. his mother, the' got dropped from the telegram in his mother replied many guests already here have room for only 50. [laughter] not in this home or later they had the family that lived in new york at madison avenue and 37th street building that today is part of the library. here are his parents. each of them came from a family with a substantial fortune that they combined. the families wealth rested on a number of things, part of the mining empire, new york city real estate especially the luxury apartment buildings on

the upper east side, and golden silver mines in nevada in a railroad ran to them. the family was also very active philanthropic lee and graham or other members served on the board of booker t. washington's tuskegee institute and there were other philanthropic ventures as well. here is a picture of graham's parents surrounded by their children and some of the spouses and offspring of those children. it was in terms of the country at the time and immensely respectable time. the boys were expected to play prominent roles in life and they did. one of them became a distinguished architect and one becamantoinebecame an editorialr "the new york times."

one became today what would become the provost of the university and later dean of the national cathedral here in washington. a grandson came an episcopal bishop and the girls were expected to marry well and they did. but graham took a different path. after he graduated from college he went to medical school at columbia university, and then he worked as a medical student on a horse-drawn ambulance in new york and for the first time came into contact with a very different side of the city where he had grown up. this was the new york of the ten amendtiananmen said he was shoct what he saw. tiny apartments where they were living back to six, seven, eight

people to a room. the often toile often toilet art of our houses like these and of course famously those of new york city also doubled up as special ops for the garment industry. he was outraged by what he saw, and that is what made him become a part of the settlement house movement and go and live in the university settlement that we saw on the lower east side and that is where rose met him for the first time. the clerk had secretly for two years over the strenuous but well conceived opposition of his family and then finally the news leaked out probably because a newspaper reporter had bribed a telegraph operator of anything of interest that came over the

wires and when it broke it was front page news. page one of "the new york times" it was reported all over the world. europe, australia received immense attention. here it is as the lead story on page one of the new york and as you can see. i'm not sure if you can read it in the back but engaged to marry a poor jewish girl. what attracted people's interest is that it was not just a marriage of someone extremely rich and someone extremely poor. but a jew and gentile. interesting marriages were unusual at that time so both the class and ethnic difference and of course we are still interested in such today. it it's what makes people so fascinated with print harry and

megan markel. the articles calling her the genius int and then they were married on july 181905. graham was seven years older. the press remained fascinated. i think the core of the public's fascination was that here there seemed to be the cinderella story. prince charming rescued poor virtuous cinderella from her home hard and brought her to live in his castle. i think for so many centuries the versions of the stories they

are curious up the possibility for transformation. will she be transcribe transfory that she couldn't be overcome and there for,and i think that t kerry said th cassidy about thit caused people to follow so closely for so many years exactly what happened. here is a picture taken a year after they married. however, their lives depends if the script because to some degree he left the castle and had no desire to live in one even though they often stayed in one or another of his parents homes. she and graham lived with

enormous disparities of wealth. some people left as the family did and others were desperately poor and often worked in dangerous conditions as well like the coal miners in west virginia. in 1906, the year after they married, they both joined the group that they thought had the best solutions to problem the ps of the injustices of their times. he had begun life and traveled about the country the special flu red flag that was draped and

engineers of passing locomotives on the next track recognized them and gave to its on their whistles when they showed him rolling by. when he came to new york he was on the platform with him because he was running his socialist candidate for the new york state legislature from the over eastside. neither won their elections of people remained fascinated by this couple. everyone still saw it as the cinderella story. here's one of the novels. it was turned into a silent film. unfortunately it was lost as many of the era didn't survive

but we still have promotional photographs from it of the actors. here's one of them. but they are saying to each other in the films you'r your gs as good as mine. there is a terrible fire the workers on the field were dropped most of them were unable to get out. they were able to escape from

the factory was locked to keep up the union organizers. almost all of them are women, half werhave for teenagers and t all were immigrants, jewish and italian. 120,000 people marched in the morning procession through new york city more than 300,000 people lined the sidewalks and as i say this is something that seemed to dramatize the awareness that people had and that it began to hav he began te enormous disparities of wealth in this country. she continued her journalism but now issues of labor and social justice for what she was writing about and women's rights. she got very involved in one case that had echoes of some of the kinds of battles that are still going on in the era today.

one case that drew her attention was that of a woman named sarah. she got a gun, shot and killed the doctor and surrender to the police. rose went to the prison where she was being held, interviewed her in yet -- and told her story in the press is much greater length than anybody else had and then announced she would pay the legal expenses and once she was

released from prison would give her and the baby a place to stay. the trial was delayed until she gave birth in prison but she wasn't found guilty in part because another woman had come forward and had been assaulted by the same dr.. starting a few years after they were married for a decade or so, the united states was convulsed with hundreds of thousands of workers walking out every year, and was a time labor unions have almost none of the rights they later acquired. strikes were often suppressed by police. these are chicago cops putting a government worker into the paddy wagon. and sometimes the militia or national guard troops. these were striking building workers in massachusetts facing state militia. this strike was organized by the

industrial workers of the world. the. one strike of the garment workers is a new york city. they are signs in english and russian, yiddish and italian rose was involved in the strikes speaking to those that often many times each day. now the cascade of the stories that continued were more about her than about them as a couple.

in 1912 there was a strike of hotel and restaurant waiters also organized by the wobblies. an organizer would walk into one restaurant or hotel dining room after another. at the waldorf astoria, the new york stock exchange and usually just as lunch and dinner is about to be served, the organizer would blow a whistle and all of them would walk out. rose was on the strike committee and addressed many rallies and hoped to handle publicity for the strike and wrote about the miserable conditions in which many of the workers worked. and in her papers, many heartfelt letters and thanks from the waiters took part in this strike.

one of the buildings involved was hotel in new york and if any of you are new yorkers, you may recognize it is still there on broadway between 703 73rd in the 74th street as an apartment house today. at the time it claims to be the largest hotel in the world which was possibly true. it had a number of dining rooms and restaurants and with the famous gathering place for musicians, show business people and mobsters. and the owner was graham's unc uncle, a passionate hater of unions, immigrants and much more. and he was absolutely furious that rose was encouraging the workers to go on strike and he e

exploded in anger and later comes back into the story. we'll see. let me turn to another aspect. one of the things that made them so fascinating was their friends they knew and worked with what to me are some of the most interesting people in the united states in that era. there is rose and max eastman editor of the magazine which in many ways was the best magazine in the united a test of time. another friend was famous for holding salons are the great questions of today wer the day e debated and she sometimes asked them to moderate one of the discussions. they were also friends with the

leading figure a former minor, car dealer, charismatic orator famous for using his fists when required and for being able to recite passages of shakespeare by heart. another was journalist john reid in many ways the liveliest of his generation determined to be at the center of the action whether that meant being in jail or in the midst of revolution in mexico or russia. they also knew the muckraker, w. e. b. du boise the latest intellectual of his time and historian, mary harris jones the famous organizer, upton sinclair to whose novel the jungle we owe our food and drug law and as he

was writing that book he sent it chapter by chapter to get his comments. they were also friends with margaret sanger the woman in the middle, the birth-control pioneer. of course that is something we take for granted today that the clinic where she was photographed was shut down by the police and sanger was sent to jail. rose was active irose was activn for birth control when talking about such things publicly at the time was against the law. another friend frequently arrested and shown here in one of the mug shot of them uncooled man the anarchists firebrand and all of these folks they knew and worked with, many of them were houseguests on occasion. some of this debate could then left the recollection. the period of american life when all of these people were active

is a remarkable time. it was a time coming and speaking of the year sor years o 1914 or so when many people believe that the world could be changed with a new and more just society in an undefined way just around the corner is. but then something happened that shattered those dreams. the first world war, which not only told some 9 million soldiers and an untold millions of civilians, it's also shattered the radical dream that the working class is of different countries would never fight each other. as you know, when the war began that the united states was not part of it in american socialists and other radicals advocated very strongly for the u.s. to stay out of the war.

rose, and a goldman and many others join something called the women's peace party and took part in the demonstrations like this one. then of course in april, 1917, woodrow wilson went before congress and asked congress to declare war. and by the next year, large numbers of american troops were going to france eventually by the millions and by mid-1918 they were heavily involved in the fighting of the world. the coming of the war brought an upsurge of war fever and ferocious government propaganda here at home like the army recruiting poster. there was also a tremendous paranoia about five and not just government propaganda with most of the press and a push againsth against radicals and dissenters

and anybody that questions the war in any form. not just those on the far left felt very strongly that it was a huge mistake for the united states ahead of the war. the justice department and local police raided the offices of left-wing organizations over the country. this is what the office of new york city looked like after the raid. i'm sure that rose was here many times. the first world war created a

rift between rose and graham stokes. she became convinced it was a terrible mistake to go to war. he was so enthusiastic about the war that he and listed in the military. too old to get sent overseas, but was in the new york national guard for several years, never got closer to combat than marching in parades like this one on fifth avenue. something else divided them that happened in late 1917. the russian revolution. the second stage of the revolution when the bolsheviks took over. rose was in favor of this. graham strongly against it. she continued speaking out against american participation in the first world war and now in favor of the russian revolution as well. and this drew the anger of many people including graham's uncle

and thof the angry hotel owner d remember him here is a report about him from the final files e bureau investigation the predecessor of the fbi that says agent received word from stokes at various times the residence at grove street held meetings with socialists and if a searcs made of the premises fro of some valuable information could be secured. a few days later we know from the records of the bureau he called the bureau, told them they would be out of town and that it was a good chance to search the house. the bureau of investigation kept a close eye on rose and agents followed her from the government stenographers transcribe transcd speeches which turned out to be very useful for me and kept close track of her.

in 1918 she was arrested, put on trial for speaking against the war and was sentenced to ten years in prison under the espionage act. a very stringent law that essentially criminalized in this country. at this point the marriage was on the rocks. they remained together for seven more years. ..

later she thought in soviet russia she had found paradise. gramlich prepared a sin to different direction, returned -- he had early in his life, religion particularly in bringing together the traditions of hinduism and christianity. they got divorced very bitterly in 1925. this put them back on the front pages one last time. as soon as they were no longer a couple, the press completely lost interest in them. but happily for me they saved all their letters, rose kept a diary, they wrote dueling unpublished memoirs, rose was published 15 years later. not to mention the recollections of their lives with her friends. so there was rich rich material to work from and i would urge

all of you to save your letters, keep diaries, give his history and something to work from. after divorce rose of a matter of principle refused alimony and she was reduced to poverty again. she remarried but to someone as poor as she was, very soon came down with cancer and died at the age of 53 in 1933. graham also remarried but without a leap out of his class this time and lived onto the age of 88 dying in 1960. so that is their story. i wish i could say that they change the world, they did not but perhaps through their eyes we can see a world that needed changing and it can still use changing today. i hope you are getting to know them as much as i did. so one i stop right there, if you have questions or comments i would be glad to hear them.

[applause] come to the microphone if you have something you want to ask. here is someone coming, can you make it to the microphone appear. >> thank you for coming. i was really interested to the storytelling approach to telling your story. what made you want to take that type of approach rather than a historian approach. >> you mean write a boring book i call to many professional historians do? [laughter] to me history is filled with

people whose stories are much more human and much were interesting than professional historians often tell them. and i see no reason why you cannot apply the techniques of good narrative and good storytelling to history, to biography, to the way you would anything else. it's curious in storytelling and history, there is a tradition of lively narrative writing about certain subjects, look at the vast plethora of books of world war ii for instance. but often for the less familiar figures of our history and other parts of history, people are not accustomed to approaching them in a narrative way. why not, i believe that you can be true to the facts and be

accurate as hell and a very, very thing footnoted and still tell a lively story. how can you find a more interesting one on this one of these people from extreme nearly different backgrounds who fell in love and thanks to the evidence that is there would letters and diaries, we can sort of see inside that relationship, i am amazed there aren't more people who have written it before. there are few but not very many. >> thank you very much. >> thank you so much. my question is, for somebody like rose who is pretty much involved in politics, activism also putting her husband in pursuit of running for office, how come she herself never thought about running into or running for a position and also -- >> they both ran for office several times, each of them but unsuccessfully.

rose ran -- graham ran once as a legislature in new york and at a time they were living in connecticut and he ran for school board position, rose ran for borough president of manhattan and i think once for congress. this is on the socialist ticket and they got very few votes. so she did definitely take part in politics herself and really for the last decade of their marriage, she was a much more public purpose under person on the public stage and she was. >> thank you. >> i was wondering if rose had any relationship with william who was a contemporary. >> not that i know of. i wish i could say anymore.

i know a little about him is name does not show up in papers and does not show up as a correspondent. >> you said she knew doctors and lawyers and i knew they were involved with the niagara movement around 19 05. >> it was leader like 19 await, 1910. >> i was just wondering -- you said her husband's parents, part of their wealth came from coal mining, if their workers were unionized and if rose ever made an attempt to influence them. >> good question, not coal mining but gold and silver mining and originally going back a generation copper mining, rose was never involved in the mining

workers union because actual labor organizing was mostly in or around new york city. not much mining there. so no, the answer is no on that. it would've made a better story if that was the case but unfortunately not. >> hello, hi, you talk about a cinderella story for rose and i was wondering what hidden message or untold truth about rose that you hope to convey in your book. >> in a way i would pay tribute to both of them for making leaves out of the roles that they were born in. and for graham to do something as a radical intermarry of

factory workers not only a factory worker but a russian jewish immigrant was really quite extraordinary. it took a soul sort of boldness. rose, what i admire about her is that she seemed to grow intellectually through most of her life, i would say she shrink intellectually to the point that she became overly enamored by the soviet union. but up into that point, you can sort of see in the records that she left letters, diaries, someone, a sense of her word expanding. and i admire that, i admire her ability to adjust to a very different world than the one she grew up in, to get along with graham's family, she became very

close friends, friendship that continued after the divorce with the sister of graham who shared her politics and she was at ease with people at every class and occupational level. you can sense that in the tone invoice and letters that she writes, what people write to her, what they say about her, she had a wide network of friends. to navigate in the world that way, especially in the highly stratified world at the time and of course we still live in a stratified society, it takes a real human warmth and imagination and i think she have those qualities. >> thank you. >> i was wondering to what extent do you think rose had an influence on graham with life after marriage and joining the

socialist movement and running for office. >> i would not say she had an influence on him and in some ways i wish he had more influence on him, one of the particular and intriguing things about the relationship is that even though they were radical in their politics, joining the socialist party, appearing on the platform and so forth. when they married, i think they both went into expecting a very traditional marriage. graham was seven years older and rose had only two years of schooling and multiple graduate degrees, she very much looked up to him, admired his learnings, the book that he read, the writers he knew and so forth and i think it took her about ten or 12 years to realize she was at

least as smart as she was. so they both begin with a traditional expectation of the marriage, rose got frustrated with that and i think graham got frustrated that she was not the traditional life that he expected. >> we have time for two more questions. >> hello, with a democratic socialist running for the democratic nomination as well with a multibillionaire who ran, what can you say the story tells us and how can we take something out of that and bring it in. >> a lot of things have not changed. [laughter] even though bernie calls himself a democratic socialist, i think socialist at that time would not use those words to describe him.

he really advocates a western european welfare state. but more importantly i think the problems that the united states had then which was so stark when we look back at the pictures of those people and so forth, we still have with us today individuals are different, and looks a little different but the income disparity between the top 1% and the remainder of the population today is greater than it was when rose and graham got married in 195. the other disparities are enormous and glaring and outreaches the tens of million people don't have medical insurance. this is something taken for granted route western europe. there are many, many other things like that that we can point to that i think illustrate in different forms, the same

sorts of things that outrage people should outrage us today. >> what would you say was the hardest part of starting the writing process for this book. >> starting the writing process -- getting the first word on the page. [laughter] the first draft is always the hardest for me, whether the first draft of the chapter or the whole book. i find every possible excuse to find things that need fixing around the house, find people to call that a been out of touch with for too long, every possible excuse. and i have learned if you're interested in the process, actually went to get the first draft done it becomes a lot easier, especially when you are

doing these research heavy works of history where there is a huge amount of information, thousands of letters and enormous quantity of newspaper stories and other raw material. if you have a first draft done and i think this applies to whether you're writing a book or college paper or anything else, when she got the first draft done, then when you discover tidbits of material you know where you can stick them in. or you see where the blank spaces are and you know what you have to go and look for in the library. this was in a way an easier book for me too write than some of the others that i've done because it was so focused on two people. in the basic raw material was their memoirs, their letters, there'd diaries that rose kept, that was the core of it.

the filling in of the material around the edges, what was happening in the country at the time was easy enough to do and very enjoyable to do. when you're dealing with a larger stretch of history, more complicated stuff, a cast of characters with many people then it becomes much harder. >> thank you. >> it is never easy. >> thank you so much, we will have a signing at the front in a few minutes and there's copies available at the book at the register. please fold up your chair as you leave. thank you all for coming. [applause] >> you are watching a special edition of book tv, now airing during the week while members of

congress due to the coronavirus pandemic, tuesday night on c-span2, life in america, first american enterprise institute michael strain argues that the future is bright for those who want to become successful in the united states. then the washington examiner offers his thoughts on why the american dream is less attainable today. later poets of prize-winning journalist report on the issues facing the working-class and rural america. join book tv now and over the weekend on c-span2. >> television has changed since c-span began 41 years ago but the mission continues to provide an unfiltered view of government. already we brought you primary election coverage, the presidential impeachment process and now the federal response to the coronavirus. you can watch a c-span's public for programming on television, online or listen on the free

radio app and be part of the national conversation through c-span daily "washington journal" program or through our social media feed. c-span, created by private industry, america's cable television can enter company as a public service and brought to you today by your television provider. >> thank you everyone for being here, i know the weather has been difficult, sorry about that, we had parking challenges but we appreciate you being here. tonight we are featuring a journalist and new york times best-selling author janice kaplan in her fascinating book "the genius of women" from overlook to change in the world. janice will be in conversation with kelly, the ceo for the woman's fund of central ohio and this will be an eliminating evening, i will say that right now. i want to think our