JHC6. Labor

Abstract Created to provide mutual aid and education, The Workmen's Circle was established in New York in 1900 and officially chartered in 1905. Massachusetts established an Independent Workmen's Circle in 1903 to maneuver around prohibitive insurance laws, but was able to unify with the national organization in 1921. Several chapters were operational in Massachusetts by 1911. The Boston District often mirrored National's development, including the establishment of cemeteries, a chorus, a camp, and I.L....

Abstract The Farband Labor Zionist Order was a Jewish fraternal organization founded in 1910 and chartered in New York in 1913. With branches across the United States and Canada, it functioned as a mutual aid society aligned with the Socialist and Zionist political party Poale Zion. The material in the collection includes correspondence, newspaper clippings, publications, press releases, photographs, meeting minutes, brochures, and memos.

Abstract In the late 19th- and early 20th-centuries, Brockton, Massachusetts was an industrial center that drew Jewish artisans and laborers to the city. They formed an organization known as the Labor League. This collection contains ledger books with member names and financial records.

Abstract The Labor Lyceum Association of Brockton was established in the mid-1920s as the governing body of the Labor Lyceum building in Brockton, Massachusetts. Labor lyceums were often centers for Yiddish culture and socialist values where members could gather for socializing, and they also acted as headquarters for labor unions and other political and social groups. The collection consists of two books containing minutes from the weekly meetings of the association’s Board of Directors, along with a...

Abstract Born in 1888 in Odessa, Sara (Buminowitz) Wernon Sloan immigrated to the United States at the age of ten with her mother and siblings. She became a garment worker and wrote of her experiences working in New York City. This collection contains typed manuscripts of her memoirs written in the 1970s and also includes related correspondence, in which various readers of the memoirs describe their impressions.