Rose Schneiderman (1882-1972) played a leading role in labor organizing and in the improvement of working conditions for women.

Rose Schneiderman was born in a Polish village on April 6, 1882. Her Orthodox Jewish parents both worked to support the family, her father as a tailor, her mother as a seamstress. In 1890 the family immigrated to the United States, settling in the lower East Side of New York City. When her father died two years later, her mother tried to make ends meet by taking in boarders and sewing, but she was forced to place her children in orphanages for more than a year.

At the age of 13 Schneiderman left school, where she had completed the ninth grade, to work as cash girl in a department store. Three years later she moved to a higher paying job manufacturing caps, even though her mother protested that factory work was not "genteel...