“As I begin this story…I am strong and vigorous at the age
of 78 and I would really much rather talk about plans and dreams for the future
than to delve back into the past.”
She was born July 8th 1862 on Staten Island New
York. She was the oldest of ten
children. She herself married at
nineteen and had six children. She began a long career as a political activist
by organizing Philadelphia streetcar workers in the early 1890”s.
She had several marriages and when the last of three failed,
after having two more children, she threw herself completely into radical
political activities. She was a member of the Woman’s Christian Temperance
Union and a tireless worker for women’s suffrage but it was labor organizations
that interested her the most.
The author Upton Sinclair, Ella’s friend and fellow
socialist asked her to investigate the Chicago meat packing industry which he
has exposed in his book The Jungle.
She joined forces with another Socialist Party Member, taking his name in order
to avoid any scandal of this unmarried investigative team. In 1919 she helped found the U.S. Communist
Party. Two years later she took the
first of several trips to the Soviet Union.
At the age of sixty three, she hitchhiked across the United States
recruiting new members for the party.
She traveled frequently back to the Soviet Union where she
was an honored speaker. Here in the
United States she was often harassed and threatened by the police. She was arrested more than thirty times
including once at the age of seventy two for assault and inciting to riot. Her active work continued for several more
years and then she retired to an apple farm in Pennsylvania where she died in
1951 at the age of eighty nine.
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