Comrade Yetta

New York: The Macmillan Company. Very Good. 1913. 2nd printing. Hardcover. (no dust jacket) [solid copy, modest wear to extremities, spine a bit turned, slight bump to bottom front corner]. Novel about a young Jewish girl on New York's Lower East Side, who's forced to go to work in a garment factory after the death of her father (owner of a second-hand bookstore). When the dreadful working conditions compel she and her co-workers to strike, Yetta gets involved with the Woman's Trade Union League and its charismatic leader, Mabel Train. This sets her on a path of transformation from an "ignorant, timid, toil-drugged" sweatshop worker to "an intelligent, strong-souled woman." (Quoting here from the review in the New York Times, which called the novel "a wise and noble book.") As her social and political consciousness rises, she ultimately gets involved in the founding and publication of a Socialist newspaper. .