Immigrant Girl Point of View

My name is Esther Klein and I am a 17-year-old who works in a textile mill in the United States. It’s 1892 and conditions for me and for people like me are not so good. I came to this country in search of the “American Dream.” This is an idea that anyone, regardless of ethnicity and social upbringing, can make a decent living in America. Of course, when I finally came to America, my experience was very different.

I came here like everyone else, on a steamship, because my home country is struggling economically. Because I am Jewish, I also wanted to leave because I suffered from political and religious persecution in my homeland. That is why I was so desperately seeking to come to America; the so called “Land of Opportunity.”

As an immigrant woman, I experienced very little satisfaction when I finally had settled here. When I was working on my parents’ farm in my home country, I never experienced working in industry or outside of my home for that matter. Here, I was introduced to the textile mill and sewing trade. This is among the few jobs offered to women here. Mostly, we either are allowed to work in factories or as domestic servants. We can never move up in the job position that we are in. That is because of the sexists views of the higher power held only by men. Not to mention our wages are so low that we are stuck in poverty. Also, there are many dangers that come with working with the machinery that scare me. There have been accidents before. I just hope that it never happens to me. Day by day, my hope of ever having or being more than this is slowly dying.

Not only am I a poor woman, I am also a Jewish immigrant and is not respected at all in this country. It’s as if there is nothing here that is different from my home country. I am still seen as nothing more than labor. People look at me and my people as if we’re diseased. Their looks make me feel dirty and worthless. Like I am not worth the money I earn every day. I feel unwelcome all the time.

I think about standing up and challenging the authority over me. I want to take a stand. I want my work to be seen as more. But, after seeing and hearing about other workers organizing against the owners of the companies we work for and failing, I begin to have second thoughts. A lot of the labor unions here try to improve the working class. They demand eight hour work days, and higher wages. These demands go unheard and then the workers begin to get restless and violent. They hold strikes that sometimes end up with many workers dead. Owners even fire off the strikers who work for them. The government does not care either way. They are always on the side of the owners. They don’t care about the poor.

I want to band together with the other girls that work in the textile mill with me and rise against the company owners. But, as much as I want to do this, I cannot. I cannot afford to lose my job in the textile mill. I need all the money I can get. This fear that I have is so overwhelming that I stay where I am and all I really have left is the hope for a better day than the last.