![]() ![]() ![]() Workers often had to provide their own supplies, including sewing machines. ![]() These women worked six to seven days a week for twelve to fourteen hours a day, with one bathroom break per day. Although the garment industry was almost exclusively owned and managed by men, the vast majority of its workers were young Jewish and Italian immigrant women. Americans could now buy “ready made” clothes in stores and catalogs. New inventions led to faster and cheaper production. The garment industry in the early 1900s was growing. Because her father found it hard to find a permanent job, Clara was often the primary breadwinner for her family. Within two weeks of arriving on New York’s Lower East Side, Clara was working in a garment factory. When Clara was 17, her parents decided to move to America and escape the violence against Jews spreading in Europe. By the time she was a teenager, Clara had formed her own beliefs about the challenges of working-class people. She was fascinated with Karl Marx and communism. ![]() She borrowed books from neighbors and hid them in her attic. She did not receive a formal education because there were no Jewish schools for girls. Clara Lemlich Shavelson was born in 1886 in Gorodok, Ukraine. ![]()
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